Dramatic vigil held for six dead babies

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This article was published 23/10/2014 (4086 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ABOUT 70 people stood in the pouring rain Wednesday night singing an aboriginal lullaby for the six babies whose remains were found Monday in a storage facility in Winnipeg.

A crowd of mostly indigenous men and women held their children close at a vigil for the unknown infants in front of the U-Haul compound on McPhillips Street and Elgin Avenue. Drummers accompanied the lullaby, with every beat of their drums representing the beating hearts of the six infants.

Before the last verse of the lullaby for the babies was sung, the drum beats stopped, symbolizing the hearts of the babies that stopped beating.

Jennifer Dethmers sang along, holding her 11-month-old niece Jordan and kissing another toddler being held by her cousin.

“It’s just sad,” said the young woman. “Imagine what happened to those babies — them crying and thinking ‘what did I do to deserve this?’Ö” she said. Dethmers said it’s important for the community to come together at a time of sorrow and tragedy.

“I’m here for support,” she said.

The organizers, members of an indigenous online social network, sent out a press release Wednesday calling on all faith groups and those with no religious affiliation to attend the impromptu service outside the storage facility where the gruesome discovery was made on Monday.

They were there “to sing for their journey, and to honour the innocent lives of these babies, which were cut so short.”

Vin Clarke, one of the vigil organizers, said he’s a member of the “Crazy Indian Brotherhood that gives voice to the voiceless.” He said they were there to speak up for the six infants whose bodies were unceremoniously stored at the U-Haul compound. “They were voiceless.”

No one knows anything about the babies whose decomposing bodies were found — whether they were Caucasian or aboriginal — and it doesn’t matter, said Michael Kannon, one of the event organizers.

“These are all of our children,” said the man who has a daughter and a one-year-old granddaughter.

He wouldn’t comment on the charges that were laid against a 40-year-old Winnipeg woman in connection with the discovery of the infants’ remains.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca