Helen Betty Osborne

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Helen Betty Osborne ( July 16, 1952 - November 13, 1971 ) was an Indigenous woman who grew up on the Norway House reservation in Canada . She was kidnapped and murdered in The Pas , Manitoba .

Life

Osborne was born in Norway House. She was the first child of Joe and Justine (née McKay) Osborne, from the Cree First Nation . She wanted to go to university and become a teacher. She had to study outside of the reservation for this. So she attended Guy Hill Residential School near The Pas, Manitoba, for two years. In the fall of 1971 Osborne was living with a Euro-Canadian family, the Bensons, and went to Margaret Barbour Collegiate.

On the day of her murder, she was at the Northern Lite Café with friends and was later home before heading back to the city center. At midnight, her friends went home. She went home at 2:30 am when she was abducted, beaten, sexually abused and murdered with 50 stitches. The next day, fourteen-year-old Kenny Gurba found her body. He and his father then informed the police .

Investigation into the murder

Initially, police suspected her friend Cornelius Bighetty, but he was released when it became clear it wasn't him. Her friends were also examined, but investigations in that direction also came to nothing.

Eventually, it was found that four young whites had committed the murder (Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan, and Norman Bernard Manger). But it wasn't until 16 years later, in December 1987, that they were brought to justice. For years they had boasted of the deed among friends; Immediately after the crime, tracks were found in her vehicle and they were ignored. It was a success for Policeman Rob Urbanoski when he took the case and asked for witnesses in the local newspaper. Yet only Johnston was convicted. Houghton was acquitted. Colgan received impunity in return for testifying against the other two perpetrators. Manger was never charged.

The Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry investigated why the investigation was taking so long and concluded that racism , sexism and indifference were the main motivations. The case was officially closed on February 12, 1999 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police .

Consequences

The Manitoba government apologized for the shameful incident on July 14, 2000 through Gordon Mackintosh, Attorney General. The province established a scholarship called Osborne , and the town's school was renamed in her memory. The city of The Pas, Manitoba, is still suffering from the consequences of this event, but the situation of the Indians there has improved since then.

On March 26, 2008, her brother was also murdered. He was found in the center of Winnipeg . It was the sixth murder in 2008.

Cultural references

On December 2nd, 2008 the Helen Betty Osborne Foundation published a graphic novel The Life of Helen Betty Osborne to educate young people about racism, sexism and indifference.

The Canadian band The Wooden Sky released an EP with four songs, namely The Lonesome Death of Helen Betty Osborne (The lonely death of Helen Betty Osborne) , a song with the same title When Lost At Sea . The song depicts the night of Osborne's murder.

Robert Munsch, an author of children's books, shared his experience when he visited Helen Betty Osborne's grave a year before the killers were caught. He shared how the event completely changed his life.

The Osborne case influenced the film The Rez Siblings by Tomson Highway (1986). Zhaboonigan Peterson, a disabled woman, monologues about two white men who raped her with a screwdriver (Osborne was stabbed 56 times with a screwdriver). Highway also attended The Pas Secondary School, graduating a year before the Osborne assassination.

In 1991 the miniseries about the kidnapping and murder of Helen Betty Osborne was produced. It's called the Conspiracy of Silence .

The writer Thomas King calls the crime against Osborne not just a "murder", but rather a "slaughter" (slaughter).

See also

literature

  • Thomas King : The inconvenient Indian, illustrated. A curious account of native people in North America. Doubleday Canada, Toronto 2017, ISBN 978-0-385-69016-4 , pp. 198 f. With photo Osbornes approx. 1971. (Illustrated edition of the first edition, unchanged in the text, 2013)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Conspiracy of Silence Film Service . Retrieved March 23, 2018.
  2. ↑ Conspiracy of Silence (1991) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Osborne, Helen Betty
BRIEF DESCRIPTION canadian indian woman
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1952
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1971