Boys don’t cry – Is it time we start talking about our murdered and missing indigenous men? – Idle No More

By Jeremy Warren – The StarPhoenix

Grace Lafond-Barr believes healing starts in the home, so she moved her family to Muskeg Lake Cree Nation from Saskatoon two years ago to escape the city where murder took away her two brothers and a son.

She hopes the distance between the city and her grandkids will mean a quieter life without the spectre of violence and vice following them as they grow into young men. Lafond-Barr has seen enough of that: in 2002, her 36-year-old brother was stabbed to death; in 2011, a 15-year-old boy shot and killed her 28-year-old son; her 35-year-old halfbrother was fatally stabbed in front of their elderly father in November 2014. “It’s a heartache I don’t wish on anyone at all. In a lot of ways, we’ve failed our children because we’re not the parents we’re supposed to be,” Lafond-Barr said in a recent interview at her home on the reserve north of Blaine Lake.

“We just keep on forgetting how to heal – quit the drugs, quit the gangs. Sometimes I feel powerless because every day you’re reminded of a girl missing or a guy missing.”

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