Cindy Gladue deserved better in life and in death
Warning: This article contains graphic content.
Cree/Métis mother of three, Cindy Gladue, was found dead in a bath of her own blood on June 20, 2011. She was in a rundown hotel along Canada’s Yellowhead Highway in Edmonton. The man who spent two nights in a row with her in that hotel room claims he awoke to seeing her dead, “flipped out” and checked out soon after.
Bradley Barton, a trucker from Ontario, said he phoned a colleague to tell him there was a dead woman in his room, claiming not to know her. When police arrived to question him after he called 911, he lied to them as well. He told police Cindy was just some lady who somehow died there. He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and manslaughter. A jury acquitted him after trial in 2015.
After intervention from organizations such as the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women and LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund), the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled the acquittal be overturned. Barton’s new trial of first-degree murder is now in its third week in Edmonton.
Barton testified he hired Cindy for sex after asking a man outside the hotel room if he knew any “lady friends.” She died a horrific death from an 11-centimetre gash that bled out through her vagina. Last week, jurors were shown Barton’s pornographic internet search history on a laptop seized by police — some of his searches related to vaginas being ripped or torn by large objects.
The defence encouraged jurors not to judge Barton’s character because he lied several times or because of his violent porn searches. He asked them to hear Barton out. As if they were to feel sorry for him? Barton took the stand Monday and to tell his side of what happened.
What about Cindy? She’s not here to tell us her side.
In the first trial, a medical examiner presented Cindy’s actual pelvis/vagina he cut out from her body as evidence in court. Her preserved vagina is still being held by the Crown. This type of body part use has not been recorded in the history of any Canadian courts.
Now, it has been almost 10 years since her death and her family has not yet buried her because she is not whole. In Indigenous culture, this type of degradation of the body is abhorrent; the pouring of more agonizing pain on top of an already gruesome death.
During the first trial, the judge and lawyers referred to Cindy as a prostitute or sex worker over 50 times. She was not referred to as a human being or honoured as a mother, daughter or friend of the many that mourn her passing. This disgusted Indigenous and women’s rights leaders. Thousands of people showed up in protests across the country to condemn this treatment of Cindy.
This time around, it seems as though Barton’s trial is barely a blip on the radar of Canadian headlines. It’s not surprising. Given that media coverage of Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) over the last five years in Canada has been less than two per cent, according to research conducted by assistant professor Karyn Pugliese of Ryerson University School of Journalism. Less than two per cent of media coverage for an ongoing genocide in this country — a big part of the problem.
Maybe it’s why perpetrators of violence against vulnerable Indigenous women think they can get away with it; because it’s free rein on Indigenous women — although only four per cent of all women in Canada, Indigenous women make up 28 per cent of homicides against women in 2019.
Maybe if we see the loss of life like Cindy’s; if we see her as more than a statistic. She had potential, hopes, dreams and deeply loved her three young daughters.
If the mainstream ditched the stereotypical lenses held toward Indigenous women, and saw us as worthwhile, maybe killers will cease to attack. If justice is served to slaughterers of life, it sends a clear message that our women matter.
Cindy mattered. Let’s not forget her in all the noise of the pandemic and business of life. If you pay attention, if you want to speak for those who can’t, this is when it matters most.