MMIW inquiry hears slain woman’s family angry over sex-trade label
SASKATOON — Family members of a slain Indigenous woman say they’re angry that she’s been labelled a sex-trade worker rather than a mother, a daughter and a sister whose death deserves justice.
Monica Burns’s body was found on a snowmobile trail near Prince Albert, Sask., in January 2015.
Her brother, Pernell Ballantyne, told the inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women on Tuesday that he’s frustrated with the way the media has described Burns and other Indigenous women.
“Maybe if they would have thought about it and come up with a different word, maybe our women wouldn’t be so targeted,” he told the hearing in Saskatoon.