Thread by @sunnshiiny

When I was very young my parents left me with my grandparents because they couldn’t afford to feed me. I was a baby. My father had been fired and my parents had to move back to Edmonton from Drumheller. With no job, we moved into my grandparents house in Alberta Avenue.

When my parents found jobs I stayed with my grandparents because my parents were working shift work at crazy hours and my grandmother was adamant I have a regular schedule and some stability. I stayed with them until I was 2.5 years old. I then returned to my parents home.

My mother got pregnant and my brother was born a few months before my 4th birthday. I was excited. I wanted to name him Tommy after my favourite cousin. But my mom named him after her father, Joseph. My grandfather was actually Jozef because he was Polish. My brother became Joey.

When my brother was an infant he had colic. So he cried a lot. I remember not liking him because he cried so much. I swore I’d never have babies if all they did was poop and cry. When he wasn’t crying, I entertained him and he became my living doll.

As soon as he learned to crawl he followed me everywhere. We were inseparable. My mom taught me to read when I was 4. And from then on, I read to my brother all the time. We played together, bathed together and shared a bedroom. He was my shadow. I was his big sister.

By the time I was six and going to grade one, he was starting to learn to talk. My mom taught me my ABC’s, numbers colours and developed my vocabulary, but I taught my brother. I’d line up shampoo and conditioner bottles and taught him to count and what colour they were.

We sang the ABC song together and other children’s songs like “Head & Shoulders Knees and Toes”. I was his first teacher.

In those days it wasn’t odd for very young children to go to the park without a parent. I took him with me and we’d slide, swing and play in the sand.

We were close. My other brother was born when I was six. He and I weren’t as close. I wasn’t home during the day so I didn’t have the same time to spend with him. I also experienced a significant trauma at 6 years of age when my youngest brother was an infant.

I didn’t know then, but I developed PTSD and my personality changed. From a high spirited, confident tomboy to an anxious and withdrawn child. Big changes happened over the next couple years. My parents divorced, my mother was hospitalized for months, my father stole our stuff.

They officially divorced when I was 8 years old. My youngest brother didn’t even remember who he was. But my first brother and I did. We remained close. And I became my brothers defender. While we shared the same parents, I was fair and he was dark skinned.

He was bullied by teachers and principals as a little boy, & by other neighbourhood kids. I stood up for him. Beat up a few bullies in the Sacred Heart schoolyard. Argued with the principal of Sacred Heart when he gave my brother the strap for lying. He wasn’t lying. I was 11.

As my mother slid further and further into mental illness, I took over as the adult. I cooked, cleaned and parented my younger brothers. When I went to high school my brothers were less interesting. Like any teen, I sought friends not family to associate with.

I left my mom’s and moved in with my dad. I’d had enough responsibility raising two younger brothers. But picking up my mom from the bar and chasing strange men from our home was too stressful. For me and my brothers. I coped by leaving. My brothers got in trouble.

Stealing cars, drugs and dropping out of school. Things never improved for my brothers, especially Joey. His dark skin made him a target. And I wasn’t there to defend him. Both my brothers spent time in youth detention for committing petty crimes. I was an honours student.

My brothers ran away with Conklin Amusements. They’d go to Calgary and get jobs working the rides, and then travel from city to city across Canada until they got to Toronto. I went to university. Blair, my youngest brother was in a major accident & thrown from a vehicle at 16.

His accident claim is an Alberta precedent setting case for determining accident liability compensation. Because he was Métis and a junior high school drop out, it was successfully argued that he deserved less compensation due to lifelong neck and back injuries.

His lifelong earnings lost were considered much less than the average 16 year old because of his ethnicity, drug use and lack of education.

I’m even mentioned in his court proceedings as an oddity. I was finished university and working by the time his case went to court.

He was a T4 prescription drug addict that had migrated to street drugs, often living in squalor. A parent to two children by age 18. I became co-guardian to his children when they were 3 & 2 years of age.

Joey, my oldest brother, he went all across the east coast of the US with Conklin and would end up in Tennessee at the end of the circuit. Then move back to Hamilton, ON until the circuit started again. He worked the big wheel and became a technician with on the job experience.

Until he had a major accident on the big wheel equipment and slammed heels first onto the pavement. They told him he’d never walk again. He proved them wrong. But he left Conklin and got into framing houses. Safer, more stable. The housing market cooled so he got into machining.

In another accident, he ended up losing a couple fingers on his left hand. That devastated him. He played guitar to relax. He could no longer play. He became depressed & turned to drugs. Hard drugs. Eventually he got into Meth. Throughout his travels we spoke weekly. Still close.

Our grandfather died and he decided to move home. His straight as an arrow big sister didn’t realize he was moving back to Western Canada to take advantage of the booming housing market (since he had earned his journeyman ticket) and set up a meth lab and sell drugs on the side.

He started a company (JB Homes Ltd.) with my younger brother and used $75,000 of my grandmother’s life savings she and my grandfather had saved over their lifetime. I didn’t know, but he used the money he received as a subcontractor to set up the meth lab in my mother’s basement.

Putting her, my grandmother and my niece and nephew (Blair’s kids who I had co-guardianship) in extreme danger since meth production is extremely toxic. I was pregnant with my first child. When I found out about the meth lab, I got angry. I threatened to call the police.

Kicked my brother out of my mother’s house, told him to get his own place. He was pulling in tons of cash and addicted to meth. We became estranged. That was Christmas 2001. He moved out in January 2002. Rented his own place. We never spoke again.

From January to May 2002 my brother built houses with hired staff and those staff he recruited to help sell meth in Western Canada.

Drug sellers in Western Canada didn’t like that he was making tons of money. $100-$150k a week. He was invading their turf & stealing their cash.

So they put a hit on him.

Some organized crime “enforcers” infiltrated my brother’s company as workers. Befriended him. Gained his trust. Then forced him to drink spiked orange juice and drove around in my brothers truck with him convulsing in the back seat.

They waited for the equivalent of enough meth to kill 150 men (toxicology report) to kill him. When he was dead, they flagged down an ambulance in Stony Plain and abandoned my brother saying he had a bad trip after taking meth. They drove off in my brother’s truck. Stealing it.

The truck was found abandoned in Sherwood Park. That was May 19, 2002. A few days before my son was born. JB Homes Ltd. Business accounts were emptied with forged company cheques. $450,000, some of it cash advances my brother had received as a subcontractor to buy materials.

The RCMP declined to investigate. Just another dead drug addict Indian. My grandmother lost her life savings. My mother was devastated. Joey was her favourite. My youngest brother was heavily involved in a criminal gang. He was acquainted with the men who murdered my brother.

The men who murdered my oldest brother contacted my youngest brother after they abandoned my brother’s truck. They told him what they did. Warned him to stop selling meth.

My mom never recovered emotionally. My brother went on a 5 year drug spree because he felt responsible.

I will go to my grave knowing the last words I said to my brother were said in anger. That’s when I swore I would never allow myself to hate again. I hated him for being weak and turning to drugs. I hated him for lying to me. I hated my other brother for being a druggie.

I was 8.5 months pregnant. I gave birth less than two weeks after burying my brother in McRae, Alberta. I never had time to grieve. Five days after my son was born we found out he had three holes in his heart.

Maybe you’re wondering why I’m revealing this painful story. I’ve been crying while I write for a couple hours now. I miss my brother. My youngest brother has cleaned up. Drug free for well over a decade. But not before he sunk deeply into organized crime. He became an enforcer.

He did things I don’t want to know about. He did it and gained access to the people who murdered our brother. I believe one of them was the man he was accused of murdering. Which Matt Britton has seen fit to tell everyone about in an attempt to smear me.

I’m not sure exactly why this man (Matt Britton) is stalking me, but he is and he’s trying to find information to discredit me. Cast doubt on my identity. I’ve never interacted with him.

He presents himself as a researcher. Yet he can’t even find my brothers obituary.

He lies and tells people my brother died from illness. But the people I worked with at PHAC are the ONLY ones I told that lie to. So Brad or Alvin, your amplifying a lie. One I told so I didn’t have to talk to you about my brother’s descent into drug use and his murder.

Matt, you’re speaking to people who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Fitting, since you’re similarly location challenged. I was 8.5 months pregnant and didn’t need the extra stress.

Matt, you seriously need to learn how to research. Your lack of any integrity, honesty and morality is only exceeded by your inability to analyze information or effectively find it. So I’ll make it easy for you.

This is my mother’s obituary. Note how her son predeceased her. legacy.com/obituaries/edm… I wrote the obituary.

This is my brother’s obituary. I wrote that one too.

I don’t lie. But you do. And I’m getting real tired of your over the top attempts at character assassination.

I get that you don’t like what I’m exposing. Nor do the people that I’m exposing like having truth presented.

But that’s no excuse for trying to discredit me by saying I’m lying about my brother being murdered.

I’m not.

I have no reason to lie. I’m not attempting to hide anything.

It’s no secret your faction of fascist FN are attempting to discredit all Métis & non status.

It’s not just me you’re attempting to discredit and to deny indigenous identity.

So I’m not lying when I state your faction of FN, not all FN, are attempting to exclude Inuit, Métis and non status FN from reconciliation.

I don’t care if you dislike that I refer to your faction of FN as fascist. I don’t care if you like that I criticize Singh, Blackstock, Diabo, & Tailfeathers and others. You don’t make the rules or get to decide when I am allowed to exercise my freedom of expression.

But you and the faction of FN want that power.

The fascist FN faction are treading over the line of extremism. Others may not recognize it, but Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works” makes it clear the path you’re on.

The strategy you’re using has been studied and documented. Propaganda, a defined sense of superiority. Your entire approach exemplifies rigid ideological adherence.

The accusations you make against me and other indigenous people you don’t approve of are without merit, twisted and manipulative tropes which reveals your agenda.

Yesterday a story on CBC highlighted the use of identity politics to reject a Saskatchewan based Métis scholar. Your faction has begun enforcing a hierarchy. FN at the top, non status and then Métis. Where only your faction’s approval based on ideological adherence, is valid.

That sir is fascism.

An undeniable hierarchy of indigeneity is being promoted. Anyone who dissents is viciously attacked and expelled from the “in group”. Repeatedly your faction promotes the Daniels decision as white supremacy. You say no nation has claimed us as indigenous.

Which is why the Métis have their own nation, leadership & territory.

You’ve surrounded yourself with non indigenous people who echo your beliefs & values. Your faction is indoctrinating ignorant Canadians & imposing your definition of reconciliation as the legitimate standard.

Evidence of the contempt & utter disrespect towards everyone who dissents from your uncompromising demands is plentiful. To be liberal & indigenous means our indigenous identity is removed. Only your dogma is allowable. Just like NDP & CPC, if you’re liberal, you’re not human.

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