Portrait of a High School Advocate
Tayrn Hachey is creating a new curriculum about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
We meet at the Red Bank Elementary School in Metepenagiag First Nation, a 20-minute drive from my home in Miramichi, N.B. Cold, heavy rain is falling. We move into the warmth of the gym. In the entrance hangs a red dress. Black face masks with a red handprint are available at the door.
I stand beside Tayrn Hachey at a vigil for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Anita Boyle is the Prevention and Awareness Coordinator for the Mawlugutineg Mental Wellness Team. She stands at the podium and begins to speak.
“The red dresses that you see in all of our communities this time of year, is a symbol of the sisters who have been murdered and those who have never been found, may they rest peacefully.” Though I am looking straight at Anita, I can feel Tayrn agreeing, a murmur, a nod. I can sense her body shifting.
“We know that the Indian Act is structured so that the needs of Indigenous women are neglected.”
Yes.
“We know that in some instances police did not file reports when our women were reported as missing.”
Yes.
“They didn’t believe our women when they say they had been sexually violated or assaulted.”
Yes.
“They often called murder, suicides or death by natural cause.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
There are many young families in the gym, children and babies, laughing or crying. During the candlelight walk around the gymnasium they run with their candles. One little girl has been separated from her mother. The crowd notices and separates for her. She finds her mother’s hand. In a somber setting a laugh from a baby keeps you balanced.
Cards are handed out. A name and age, which we line up to read into a microphone. Each card identifies a murdered or missing indigenous woman or girl. The youngest was four.
An elder, Mary Ann Ward, sits beside the podium in traditional Mi’gmaw dress. She is smudging. Sweet grass is burning, the smoke lazily lifting through the air. After reading the name on the card, some approach her to be smudged.
Throughout the vigil Tayrn stays close to me, a sign of her 16-year-old maturity. She knows I’m alone while she knows most of the people here. She brought me an umbrella in case we had to walk outside. She greets her cousins and introduces me to her father. Throughout the vigil she checks in with her dad. She finds him after the walk. They share a smile.
Tayrn is bubbly, friendly and uber comfortable. Her confidence and ease talking to adults makes her sparkle. She has long brown hair, a cherub face and wears pink glitter eye shadow daily. A grade ten student at James M. Hill High School, she is working on her Passion Project for her independent study class. She is building her own curriculum, educating herself on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
“I would really like to educate my school on this, so I’m going to paint a mural and have it right out in the middle of the cafeteria,” she says. The mural will be a replica of a photo her cousin Nebawisk Denny created. A red handprint covers part of Neba’s face, with pictures of murdered and missing indigenous women behind her. Neba looks stunning, the photo is beautiful. The red handprint across her face is aggressive. Within her school Tayrn is trying to help people understand.
“She is trying to instill within students her own age a deep desire to do what she is doing, to raise awareness, to make change,” says Crystal Cameron, Tayrn’s teacher. Tayrn recalls a class discussion where students dismissed residential schools as something that happened in the past. It was a horror, but it has nothing to do with them. The general consensus was we, the white community shouldn’t have to keep saying sorry. This cold, dismissive attitude is common.
I experienced this way of thinking in my high school. Hilary Bonnell was a student at my school. She went missing in September of 2009. She was murdered and assaulted by her cousin and found buried in the woods. She was 16. She was an Indigenous girl.
When her body was found, the school had a moment of silence after the morning announcements. Then classes started. Her funeral was during the week. I left school to attend. At the church I stood outside with many others while the funeral started and ended inside. I watched the family walk in to mourn the death of a child. The cold was cutting, and I felt so empty inside.
The next day, I was informed the debate I had missed was lost because I was not there. Students and teacher alike let me know this. They were not angry, or rude. I was not being reprimanded. Just a fact; we would have won. I was shocked, without fully understanding why. I carried it with me throughout the day. I dropped my best friend off at home after school, “no, I don’t want to come in.” I wanted to be alone. All around me, no one appeared to care. It was over. “I didn’t know her” seemed to be the attitude. There should have been buses taking students to the funeral. There should have been grief counsellors. There should have been a memorial in school. There was a moment of silence and a missed debate.
As Anita Boyle said at the vigil, “we know the dangers, we know about systemic racism, we know our girls are targeted.” She spoke of the murder of indigenous women and girls as an act of genocide.
Though residential schools have been closed, the last in 1996, the traumatic effects of that experience are long lasting. “We know the violence in our community is rooted in the trauma through our history, our often-violent history and that is through the impacts of colonization and its forced goal to assimilate us as indigenous people into the general population,” she says.
Discussing the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, Taryn’s voice raises an octave. The death of George Floyd and the explosion of the movement and protests, specifically against police brutality, was followed by a tragedy in Metepenagiag. Taryn’s cousin, 48-year-old Rodney Levi, was shot and killed by RCMP. Earlier in June, an Indigenous woman from Edmundston was shot and killed by police during a wellness check.
“The stuff that happens to First Nations People does not get documented, it does not get the attention it deserves, so the BLM movement was this huge thing going on, as it should be and then I was saying to myself, OK if that’s so huge why can’t this be huge too? It’s the exact same thing happening.”
In contrast to her bright disposition, she shares this bleak belief, “I think racism will always be there. I’ve experienced racism, it’s just rooted in me, that it will always be there.”
Despite these feelings, Tayrn still wants change. She still wants to start a conversation with peers. She wants them to know she is at risk. She is the one who needs to survive in a system that works against First Nations people, women in particular.
I thank Tayrn and walk out into the night. I follow the river home, driving away from Metepenagiag in the cold rain. As I near the center of the city traffic gets heavy. The streetlights spread warm light through the evening. My city is busy with shoppers, running in and out of grocery and convenience stores.
I was still thinking about Tayrn, how she greeted Sunshine at the end of the vigil. She was gushing over the toddler, his beautiful eyes and lashes. Sunshine’s baby. I thought of how Taryn turned her body to include me in the conversation, so we could both smile at the baby boy in his mother’s arms.
Mary Allan is a third-year student at St. Thomas University. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in Journalism and a minor in Human Rights. She has always been an avid reader and is happy to now be working on her writing skills. This story was written for the class, The Power of Narrative.
