Indigenous woman’s family angry over sextrade label

Family members of a slain Indigenous woman say they’re angry that she’s been labelled a sex-trade worker rather than a mother, a daughter and a sister whose death deserves justice.

Monica Burns’s body was found on a snowmobile trail near Prince Albert, Sask., in January 2015.

Her brother, Pernell Ballantyne, told the inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women on Tuesday that he’s frustrated with the way the media has described Burns and other Indigenous women.

“Maybe if they would have thought about it and come up with a different word, maybe our women wouldn’t be so targeted,” he told the hearing in Saskatoon.

Ballantyne wore a T-shirt with a picture of Burns on the front and said the shirt has drawn comments from people on the street who recall that Burns was a sex-trade worker. That’s been hurtful to Burns’s young daughter, who will never have the chance to bond with her mother, he said.

“That really gets me mad because my niece has to deal with that, has to hear that.”

Ballantyne also took issue with Burns’s killer being allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter after being charged with second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison with three years of credit for time served.

“It was like the justice system ... rushed through just to get it over and done with.”

The aunt of Nadine Machiskinic, who was found dead at the bottom of a hotel laundry chute, told the inquiry families are being repeatedly traumatized as they push for accountability in the justice system.

“I don’t think any family should ever have to be put in that position to continually have to go before the media and be retraumatized over and over and over ... to have people listen and take accountability and acknowledge the mistakes that were made and acknowledge the things that were happening,” Delores Stevenson said Tuesday.

Machiskinic was 29 when she was found at the bottom of the laundry chute at Regina’s Delta Hotel in January 2015.

An autopsy report said the mother of four died of blunt force trauma to the head, neck and trunk consistent with a fall. Blood tests also showed Machiskinic had alcohol and a mix of methadone and three other drugs in her system, as well as high levels of sleeping medication.

The coroner’s initial report deemed the cause of death undetermined, but the final report ruled the death accidental with no evidence of foul play and no evidence of suicidal intent.

“I had approached the coroner’s office on many occasions and asked them how they had come to the conclusion, given the very little evidence they had, given the lack of investigation that was done,” Stevenson said.

“How did they come to the conclusion that they were going to rule it an accident?”

It took police more than a year before they started looking for two men shown on surveillance video getting onto an elevator with someone who appeared to be Machiskinic.