Ignored cries for help shows racism Indigenous women face: advocate

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This article was published 13/08/2021 (1186 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HILDA Anderson-Pyrz wants to know what someone would do if their daughter’s pleas for help were ignored after a brutal assault.

Anderson-Pyrz, manager of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak’s missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls liaison unit, was reacting to the case in which an Indigenous teenager, raped in a downtown alley in 2019, was ignored by other women when she sought help in a downtown public washroom after the attack.

At the sentencing hearing Wednesday for Andrew Okemow, Crown attorney Shannon Benevides told court the victim was hysterical after the assault and fled to a washroom at Cityplace mall to seek help.

Okemow, 49, has pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault.

“They just looked at her and walked away,” Benevides said of the passersby in the mall washroom. “People treating her like garbage because of what she looked like. And why? (She) felt and her impression was that this was because she was Indigenous.”

A woman who works for the Bear Clan was in one of the washroom stalls when she heard the girl cry for help and came to her aid, Benevides said. That woman called 911 and stayed with the victim until police arrived.

“Would you not want others to care, to show this young Indigenous girl who was victimized that there’s people who care out there, that they’re willing to step up and help in a situation that obviously will ultimately scar her for life?” Anderson-Pyrz said.

She said racism leads to Indigenous women being undervalued in society.

“There’s so much racism within this country, and that Indigenous women have been viewed as less than, that many individuals see us as if we don’t matter. But we do matter, we’re sacred,” she said.

She said Indigenous women and girls need better support in society.

“It’s very unfortunate that we’re still having to have these horrific experiences and experience violence at alarming rates — it’s 2021, we really need to reflect as governments, as institutions, as organizations and as Canadians on how we can be part of the solution, supporting pathways of Indigenous women and girls, reclaiming who they are,” the advocate said.

“As a society, we have to recognize the alarming rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls and how many systems that are currently in place continue to perpetuate that violence.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca