Shirley Lonethunder
Shirley Lonethunder
Shirley Lonethunder, is a Cree woman and mother of two children, from White Bear First Nations reserve in Saskatchewan. In 1991 she was 25 years old and living in Saskatoon. Her family knew she used drugs. According to her brother, she also occasionally worked in the sex trade to make enough money “to get by” and provide for her children. In late November 1991, she told her mother, Doris Lonethunder, she would be starting university in the New Year and asked her to look after her infant son and daughter. She told her brother a different story. She said she had to get out of Saskatoon to avoid the police. The last time her family saw her was on December 20, 1991.
The Lonethunder family didn’t realize Shirley Lonethunder was missing until March 1992 when they were contacted by her lawyer, who said she had missed a court date. Until then, her mother thought Shirley Lonethunder simply “went away somewhere.” Now Doris Lonethunder began to fear for her daughter. She and her son filed a Missing Person report with the Saskatoon Police that same day.
The Saskatoon Police Service’s missing persons policy states that investigators have a responsibility to “liaise with complainants” and should request media assistance, if necessary, to help locate a missing person. According to Doris Lonethunder, the police investigator was in regular contact with her at first, phoning every week for approximately a month, and then phoning every two weeks. However, the police did not make any public appeals for assistance on the case and the family members felt the police were not very supportive. After about three months, the investigator stopped phoning. Approximately six months after having filed a Missing Person report, Shirley Lonethunder’s brother contacted the Saskatoon Police to enquire about any progress in the case. He says that he was told there was no record of the Missing Person report. Saskatoon police declined to answer Amnesty International’s questions about unresolved cases, such as Shirley Lonethunder.
In 1992 Doris Lonethunder spoke to an Indigenous healer from the United States who told her that he had had a vision of Shirley’s body at a location south of Saskatoon, a short distance beyond the city’s limits and therefore in the jurisdiction of the RCMP. At first, Doris Lonethunder hesitated to take this information to the police because she thought the police, who did not believe in “Indian ways”, would not take her seriously. In the end, she spoke with an Indigenous officer stationed at the local RCMP detachment that responded sympathetically and said she would look into this information. About a week later, the officer was transferred, “And that,” says Doris, “was it.” As far she knows, nothing happened with the information she provided.
While internationally-recognized policing standards would not obligate police to act on information of this sort, the sensitivity and understanding that Doris Lonethunder experienced when dealing with the Indigenous officer helped build her trust and confidence. When that disappeared, the trust and confidence slipped as well.
In October 1994, another woman’s remains were discovered in the general area where Doris Lonethunder had asked the RCMP to search for her daughter’s body. By the end of the month, RCMP had unearthed two other women’s bodies at the same site. The three women were Eva Taysup, Shelley Napope, and Calinda Waterhen. All three were Indigenous women who had been reported missing in 1992 and 1993.
On 12 April 1995, a local newspaper quoted an RCMP officer as stating that the force was considering excavating the grove where the three bodies had been found. [1] The officer indicated more bodies might be out at the site. In almost immediate response the RCMP issued a press release denying having any plans to excavate, stating that they had no indication there might be other bodies at the site. [2] Amnesty International has now been informed by the RCMP that there has been a recent search of the area conducted by the Saskatoon Police Service, including with the use of Ground Penetrating Radar, and that there are plans to search further.
In 1996, John Martin Crawford was convicted of murder in the killings of Eva Taysup, Shelley Napope, and Calinda Waterhen. He was the sole person charged and convicted. Crawford had previously served seven years in prison for abducting and murdering another Indigenous woman, Mary Jane Serloin, age 35, in 1981.
The body of another Indigenous woman, 37-year-old Janet Sylvestre, was found outside Saskatoon in 1994. She had been raped and killed. No one has ever been convicted in her murder.
Commenting on the apparent public apathy over the disappearances and murders of Indigenous women in Saskatoon in the early 1990s, Janice Acoose, a professor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in Saskatoon wrote in 1996:
I have waited in agonized and frustrated silence for some kind of expression of concern (perhaps even outrage) from members of the community, women’s groups, or political organizations. To date, few, if any, have come forward and spoken to the nature of this heinous crime or the need to protect Indigenous women who were so obviously the target of this murderer. And perhaps, most importantly, I waited for someone to come forward and respectfully acknowledge the lives of these four women. [3]
[1] “Grove may harbour more bodies,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, April 12, 1995.
[2] Goulding, Supra, footnote 78, at p. 133.
[3] Acoose, Supra, footnote 105.
Updated: 29 September 2009