Boushie’s family and friends gather for solemn ceremony
‘We’re still grieving and hurting ’ says mother on the anniversary of trial’s end
As the sun set over North Battleford on Saturday night, lights still burned brightly in the snow — candles lit in memory of Colten Boushie.
Family, friends and supporters gathered at the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford on Saturday for a pipe ceremony, candlelight vigil, and the opportunity to reflect on the past year since the end of Gerald Stanley’s murder trial. The ceremony was planned to remember Boushie, one year to the day after Stanley was acquitted of second-degree murder in Boushie’s shooting death.
“What happened there was North Battleford’s finest kangaroo court,” Colten’s mother Debbie Baptiste said on Saturday.
“We’re still grieving and hurting. We want to keep his memory alive.”
Colten’s uncle Alvin Baptiste helped guide the pipe ceremony alongside visiting elder Edward Bill of Pelican Lake, passing the foot-long wooden pipe around the small crowd that gathered at Chapel Gallery.
Alvin Baptiste said the pipe ceremony was meant to be about prayer and the connections to the Creator and Mother Earth. Despite strong opinions on the way the trial ended — a number of family members on Saturday were wearing “Justice for Colten” shirts and hoodies — the ceremony was not a protest against the outcome, but a solemn declaration that Colten would not be forgotten.
“For me … (it’s) to not forget what happened to my nephew,” Veronica Whitford, one of Colten’s aunts, said after the ceremony. “His life mattered.”
Boushie was killed in a confrontation on Stanley’s farmland during the summer of 2016. Stanley testified at the trial that he fired warning shots when Boushie and his friends drove an SUV onto his property, before the gun went off accidentally and struck Boushie in the head.
The acquittal and ensuing lack of an appeal were divisive moments for the province and the country. Critics of the decision have said the case is another example of a lack of justice for Indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan’s judicial system. Family members spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa and to a United Nations forum in New York on the issue of Canada’s Indigenous peoples in the justice system and calling for reforms.
Now, a year after the decision was handed down, the family has chosen the anniversary of the trial’s end as the day to commemorate what Boushie’s life — and death — has meant to them.
Autumn and Krissa Baptiste, sisters and Colten’s cousins, remember him as a fun-loving young man with an “awesome sense of humour.” But his death has left a hole in their lives, and for the sisters the trial was the final tragedy in a series of them for the family. It’s feelings like theirs in the family and among their supporters that made it important for the memorial to take place on the anniversary of the end of the trial: it was the day they felt the system failed them.
“It’s a memory of the trial, so it’s kind of sad,” Krissa Baptiste said. “But we’re all together, so it’s like healing.”
“It’s also a celebration of his life,” Autumn Baptiste added.
There has been positive change in the last year, according to Debbie Baptiste and Eleanore Sunchild, a lawyer and family friend. Both women mentioned the inclusion of Indigenous jurors in the Bryden Whitstone inquest as reasons to hope change is possible, after Stanley was acquitted by an all-white jury.
Alvin Baptiste, in a speech before the candlelight vigil to cap off the day, said his nephew was “like a son” to him. Autumn Baptiste said Colten was more of a little brother than a cousin for her and her sister.
As family and friends sang and danced in the darkness with candles in hand and the sun finished crossing over the horizon, the day ended with thanks to those who came out to support Colten’s memory.
“I’m very honoured that everyone showed up today,” Debbie Baptiste said before the vigil. “Feels really good ... it brings a little healing. It’s just one day at a time for us.”