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By Justine Kelsie

Sexsmith stabbing case focus of local judicial reform conversation

Mar 12, 2018 | 7:00 AM

A group of people will be gathered in front of the Grande Prairie Provincial Courthouse Tuesday with drums and stories to highlight the need for judicial reform.

Members of the Indigenous community have planned the “public conversation” in hopes of educating people in the region on how Grande Prairie fits into the dialogue.

Andrea Deleeuw is set to be part of the group attending the event that afternoon.

“We hope to share some educational information about these patterns we know to be true in the Canadian Justice System. For Indigenous people, statistics show, we just don’t get justice the same way as other people do,” said Deleeuw. “We are hoping to share that information with people. I know it is a sensitive topic, but I believe that education has the capacity to make change.”

The plan is to localize the conversation with a focus on a fatal stabbing case from Sexsmith more than two years ago. After a fight broke out outside of a bar in the town in October 2015, four men were stabbed and sent to hospital. One of them, 18-year-old Donald Moberly, died from his injuries.

In November 2017, a seven-man, five-woman jury acquitted the accused, Jordan Joseph Wendland, of one count of Manslaughter and three counts of Aggravated Assault.

The group Deleeuw is part of, which is called Racialized Injustice in Canadian Courts: A Treaty 8 Grassroots Response, said in a media release that the meeting outside the courthouse is being presented for “those who seek to learn more about the recommendations proposed by decades of inquiries and reports”.

Deleeuw points to two commissions throughout the last 27-years including the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry from 1991 and the Implementation Commission from 2001. She says that there hasn’t been much action from the two inquiries.

“Part of the (event) is public awareness, that these are issues we care about in our little section of the world. Lots of times when we see national headlines, (we think) that this is something that happens in other places and not necessarily here. This is very relevant to Grande Prairie and it happens quite often in our region too. It is just making that awareness that there are people that care about these things in our community also,” said Deleeuw.

She says seeing high-profile cases like the Colten Boushie case in Saskatchewan and the Tina Fontaine case in Manitoba are disheartening but have pushed the Indigenous community in the peace region to make their voices heard.

Talking About Judicial Reform is set to take place at 1 p.m. Tuesday with Moberly’s family speaking about their experiences.

by Justine Kelsie