Based On A True Story

Let me tell you a true story                                

Cindy Gladue died in June 2011,
bleeding to death after an encounter
 with a married Mississauga trucker.

A not so nice tale,
About an Ontario trucker
Acquitted, while on bail

Bradley was a white man
Bent on getting him, some tail;
Did his wife see it coming?
Maybe she read braille

Cindy was a Native woman
Though not quite as pale
A disenfranchised mother
Who lived off sex for sale                                                                        

Nestled deep in the heart                                                                            

Cindy Gladue case:
Why the not-guilty verdict
 has sparked outrage

Of good ole Harper country,
Where the black gold flows
Is a way to put it bluntly.

"Nice Canadian" is a mask,
That's why good Albertans ask:
Do Ontarians collect more cash,
From shipping us their white trash?

In Edmonton, Alberta
Are they in, Sir Francis Galton, circa?
Are women covered by the burka,
While doing the mazurka?

The system steals more lives,
Than a Manitoba burglar                                                                        

Assembly of First Nations National
Chief Perry Bellegarde
says a roundtable with premiers
later this month
 in Ottawa is an "interim step" towards
getting a national, public
 inquiry into missing and murdered
indigenous women.
(Jody Porter/CBC)

More Aboriginal murder
Cindy's screams, are getting further
From the truth that never heard her
Just wait, it gets absurder

From a 4 inch internal wound
Her cause of death, impugned
Cindy bled slow from her vagina
Are we in Canada, or in China?

The Edmonton Crown
Helped Bradley's defense,
By submitting her torso,
Like exculpatory evidence!
Displaying her vagina,
Made no legal sense.
What were they thinking?
Were these people dense?

The crown said the judge dropped the ball
It seems the same judge had the gall                                                        
To assume Cindy consented to sex,
When toxicology showed inebriating effects!

Was Bradley's fun consensual?
He said Cindy's blood was menstrual.
The defense, said his fingers caused her death
Were these officials on crystal meth?

Surveillance video shows
Cindy Gladue and Bradley Barton
 leaving Barton's hotel room.
 The next night, she would
 return to his room, where she
 would later be found dead.
(Supplied)

Cindy was somebody's mother and daughter

Yet not even a conviction for manslaughter

For people of colour, injustice is normal 

And application of the law is informal

Cindy had no jury of her peers

Did any know,
Her trail of tears?
Did they know of the "60's Scoop"
Canada's illegal 60's swoop,
Stealing the Native from the child,
To make them white and less wild?

It's time to vote in,
People who will champion,
A National Inquiry to begin!
It's time to vote for what is right
And stop Canada's systemic blight!

Political parties need rotation
Their complacency,

Laurie Odjick holds a sign
with a photo of her missing daughter,
 Maisy, who disappeared
along with Shannon Alexander
 in 2008 at age 16. Today,
the Legal Strategy Coalition on
 Violence Against Indigenous
 Women released a report that
looked at the recommendations
in 58 reports on the issue of
 missing and murdered aboriginal
women.
(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

A sense of frustration                                                             

Bad feelings for our nation
The inertia of systemic stagnation

When political parties
Stay in power for too long
They become,
What my father called,
Wrong and strong!