Indigenous Protest March Blocks Canso Causeway

AULD’S COVE – The link between Cape Breton Island and mainland Nova Scotia was the site of sobering thoughts and calls to action in August, as members of indigenous communities from across Cape Breton descended on the Canso Causeway to voice their concerns regarding murdered and missing indigenous women (MMIW) in Atlantic Canada and across the country.

The Causeway was closed for roughly an hour on the early evening of August 16, as local RCMP officials cooperated with roughly sixty people who burned sweetgrass, waved yellow flags and sang traditional Mi’kmaq songs as they walked from Port Hastings to Auld’s Cove with a message of change and justice.

The recent deaths of two indigenous Canadians in New Brunswick, Chantel Moore and Rodney Levi, at the hands of police weighed heavily on the minds of those who took part in the Sunday evening protest. One of the event’s organizers, We’koqma’q First Nation band councillor Annie Bernard-Daisley, noted that the event was organized in a matter of only a few days to coincide with a nationwide day of protest against Moore’s death. Moore’s mother, Martha Martin, phoned Bernard-Daisley’s smartphone in the late stages of the protest to offer her thanks and support to the protestors.

“We’re standing up for her daughter, and for everyone else that’s been murdered and gone missing,” Bernard-Daisley declared. “We’re standing up for justice.”

The event hit home in other ways for Bernard-Daisley, whose cousin Cassidy Bernard has been a focal point of issues related to MMIW since her violent death nearly two years ago. Slain in front of her two infant children at her home in We’koqma’q in October 2018, Bernard’s case went without a confirmed suspect for 14 months until her former boyfriend, Dwight Isadore of nearby Wagmatcook First Nation, was charged with second-degree murder.

With this development still fresh in many minds, We’koqma’q First Nations Chief Rod Googoo was disappointed to see male members of the community making up only 10 per cent of the turnout.

“Just because these are native children, nobody cares? Just because these are native women, nobody cares? Well, we do, where I come from,” Chief Googoo declared.