Stephanie Wesley

In regards to the on-going investigation of a brutal sexual assault against a First Nations woman in Thunder Bay in December, Thunder Bay Police Service has become the latest target of the hacker activist group Anonymous.
In a Youtube video posted on Jan. 22, Anonymous threatened to release “mountains of dirt” on the Thunder Bay Police Services if the assault case on a local First Nations woman is not taken more seriously.
Anonymous accuses the Thunder Bay Police Service of not taking the assault as seriously as they are claiming to.

The high number of assaults and incidents of racism against First Nations people in Thunder Bay over the past few months have reverberated through the city, including at Dennis Franklin Cromarty (DFC) high school.
Making the situation even more troubling for students at the school, one case under investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police allegedly involved a member of Thunder Bay Police Services driving a DFC student outside of the Thunder Bay city limits and leaving the student to walk back on a cold winter night.

After thinking about the way things are in the city I live in at the moment regarding race-relations between Anishinaabe and non-Anishinaabe people, I still feel it is important to try to work together or at least keep your head up and continue to live your life.

I was honoured with the opportunity to attend another writing-related event in Winnipeg a couple of weekends ago. It was an event orchestrated by Renate Eigenbrod and Cheryl Suggashie, and included youth participants who are 3rd and 4th generation residential school survivors.
Members from the Aboriginal Writers Collective hosted workshops for the youth, and I am happy to say that they remembered who I was from the Manitoba Indigenous Writer’s Festival I had attended in the fall. I am hoping that as a writer, our paths will only continue to cross as the days go by.

After the recent bombing attacks at the Boston marathon that injured many and killed three people, I noticed a lot of commentary via social media focusing on a particular topic regarding the tragedy.
While the incident itself was very terrifying and unbelievable, there were commentators out there who asked the questions “what about all of the bombings that occur on a daily basis in war-torn countries? Why aren’t you as shocked and appalled by those?”