I am writing to comment on your article in last week’s issue of the Aquinian titled, “A Ritual to Remember.”
The meagre efforts to get in contact with a few native students along with the end result can be considered to be offensive. It is obvious to our community that this article was written by and for non-native students.
It was not about the fact that we were honouring our friend Julia who passed away.
The person that wrote the article was obviously interested in the “ritual” aspect more than our friend’s life, which was the purpose of the memorial.
In covering the life and death of John McKendy and George Martin, the Aquinian made a huge effort to cover their stories.
Their pictures appeared on the cover and there were two-page spreads about them. But in this article there was not even one picture of Julia. It’s obvious that there was an agenda here. The story itself was short and insufficient to give you any idea of the life that our friend led.
Although Julia’s cousin did do a really good job at speaking to who Julia was it only equalled out to one paragraph about her out of the whole article. Someone did a diligent job at not really saying anything about Julia, at all.
This article does nothing but reaffirm the common held ideology that our friend Julia is just another dead Indian, as business on STU campus continued without a hitch while our community grieved.
We know that in circumstances similar to this one the university offered more services to students who needed it. We understand that everything cant stop every time a person dies but we were offered little to no help, if it weren’t for our own students, Andrea Bear-Nicholas and Janice Ryan, nothing would have been done.
Your article did nothing to remember our friend, as your headline was A Ritual to Remember and the caption was memorial held for first-year student Julia Barnaby.
We were disgusted.
-TJ Lightfoot
