Justice? What Justice?
A sentencing circle is to sit in judgement of Christopher Pauchay, the aboriginal man whose own judgement as a father of two vulnerable infants was so compromised by the fog of alcoholic oblivion that he regularly indulged in, that his errant neglect was directly attributable to the miserable deaths of his little daughters.
Their mother was off on her own tangent that winter night in Saskatchewan, immersing herself in alcohol and company at a party, the children left in their father's care.
"I have concluded that a sentencing circle is appropriate in these circumstances" announced Judge Barry Morgan. The Yellow Quill First Nation community has rallied around the young family, supporting them, and dedicating themselves to helping the man and his wife survive the misery they have brought upon themselves.
That kind of parental neglect and the victimization of aboriginal children is nothing new. It isn't that aboriginals don't love their children as much as anyone else does. It's simply that they have absorbed morally vacuous values, have succumbed to a debased lifestyle, eschewing personal responsibility for themselves, and for their young.
They are trapped in a sordid existence of unemployment, restiveness, resentment and alcohol and drug consumption. Their children's needs become secondary adjuncts to their own confused, valueless lives.
A year ago, that heavily inebriated young father hauled his daughters, Kaydance 3, and Santana, 16 months, dressed in diapers and T-shirts out of their home at 12:30 a.m. into a wind-whipped winter night of sub-zero temperatures: -50 degrees. He set out to visit with a neighbour. And lost track of the children.
He was discovered about 5:00 a.m. on the doorstep of a neighbour, suffering from hypothermia. Taken to hospital with severe frostbite.
How might it not have occurred then and there to look into the well-being of the children? At the very least, go over to the family home, if only for the purpose of informing his wife of his having been taken to hospital - if neighbours would infer that she was at home, looking after the children.
Perhaps even so, it would have been too late for the little girls. It took another eight hours before it was realized he'd had the children with him.
A neighbourhood search was launched, door-to-door, without success. The father said tersely "check the field". That area of bleak unprotected ground between the neighbouring homes on the reserve. The sisters were found, two days apart, not too far from one another, about 100 metres from the family home.
Dead, of hypothermia. Dead, in fact, from alcohol absorption, from parental engagement in mind-deadening drugs. There is another child in the family, born since that event. The question is whether the two young parents feel sufficiently concerned about the new child to protect and cherish it.
And whether their community is sufficiently appalled and traumatized to turn themselves away from that dead-end culture of meaningless existence, toward one of self-respect and care for their young.
Their mother was off on her own tangent that winter night in Saskatchewan, immersing herself in alcohol and company at a party, the children left in their father's care.
"I have concluded that a sentencing circle is appropriate in these circumstances" announced Judge Barry Morgan. The Yellow Quill First Nation community has rallied around the young family, supporting them, and dedicating themselves to helping the man and his wife survive the misery they have brought upon themselves.
That kind of parental neglect and the victimization of aboriginal children is nothing new. It isn't that aboriginals don't love their children as much as anyone else does. It's simply that they have absorbed morally vacuous values, have succumbed to a debased lifestyle, eschewing personal responsibility for themselves, and for their young.
They are trapped in a sordid existence of unemployment, restiveness, resentment and alcohol and drug consumption. Their children's needs become secondary adjuncts to their own confused, valueless lives.
A year ago, that heavily inebriated young father hauled his daughters, Kaydance 3, and Santana, 16 months, dressed in diapers and T-shirts out of their home at 12:30 a.m. into a wind-whipped winter night of sub-zero temperatures: -50 degrees. He set out to visit with a neighbour. And lost track of the children.
He was discovered about 5:00 a.m. on the doorstep of a neighbour, suffering from hypothermia. Taken to hospital with severe frostbite.
How might it not have occurred then and there to look into the well-being of the children? At the very least, go over to the family home, if only for the purpose of informing his wife of his having been taken to hospital - if neighbours would infer that she was at home, looking after the children.
Perhaps even so, it would have been too late for the little girls. It took another eight hours before it was realized he'd had the children with him.
A neighbourhood search was launched, door-to-door, without success. The father said tersely "check the field". That area of bleak unprotected ground between the neighbouring homes on the reserve. The sisters were found, two days apart, not too far from one another, about 100 metres from the family home.
Dead, of hypothermia. Dead, in fact, from alcohol absorption, from parental engagement in mind-deadening drugs. There is another child in the family, born since that event. The question is whether the two young parents feel sufficiently concerned about the new child to protect and cherish it.
And whether their community is sufficiently appalled and traumatized to turn themselves away from that dead-end culture of meaningless existence, toward one of self-respect and care for their young.
Labels: Environment, Human Relations, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 7:13 PM
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