Ashley BrandonAPTN NewsMembers of the Sagkeeng First Nation came together Thursday to remember women who are missing or who have been murdered.The gathering is four years in the making.Earl Morriseau lost his sister Glenda in 1991 – and his neice Kelly in 2006.“It made me feel a lot happier,” said Morriseau. “I think I can maybe put them to rest in my mind.“Hopefully they can feel better as well and get some rest because a lot the ways they went were really tragic, you know.”The 200 people who gathered at the memorial say it was a healing process for them.“I think they’ve been able to share their stories now, about their loved ones that are gone, you know,” said Chief Derrick Henderson.“They can say things openly now.”Lillian Cook coordinated the meetings and sat with the families through the process.“This is what they wanted. They didn’t wan to be alone,” she said.“They wanted to share their story, they wanted to share the memory of their loved ones.”The band says there are at lease 17 missing or murdered women and girls from the community.Cook says after doing her own research, the number is more like 19.One of them was Tina Fontaine, whose unsolved case led to the national inquiry.Isabel Fontaine says she’s here for her sister Sharon who was last seen in 2000.“She was hilarious. Always laughing, just bring out the whole room with laughter,” she says.“That’s the way I think about her all the time, like the positive stuff she used to say.”
