Just Another Indian

Murders generally make headlines across the country, especially serial killings. However, this was not the case in Saskatoon in the mid 1990's when the bodies of three Native women were discovered. John Martin Crawford murdered three Native women. The women's deaths through to Crawford's arrest and subsequent trial received press coverage equaling a paragraph or two of newspaper space, if at all.

Journalist and author Warren Goulding wants to bring the deaths of these women into the spotlight as a tribute to their lives and to make up for where the mainstream media remained indifferent. His book, Just Another Indian, provides intimate details both about the killings and Crawford himself, through to his murder convictions. Most of all, his victims are presented not only as Native women, but as people who had lives and families who cared about them, a fact that was often ignored when the case was investigated.

Now a freelance writer and editor, Goulding was a reporter at the Star Phoenix when the three women were killed. "The whole lack of interest in the story seemed quite remarkable to me, that there would be a triple murder and barely got people in Saskatoon interested in the story, let alone province-wide or nationally. I felt bad for the families that nobody seemed to care," he explains.

A stereotype of Native people as being transient in their lifestyles seemed to taint the entire case. "There was this notion that seems to be perpetuated that no one even knew they were missing. That's not true: people did report them missing and were anxious about them," he says. "We really need to reinforce that idea that these were worthwhile human beings who had families that loved them and miss them."

In fact, Goulding says that the second or third day of Crawford's trial, the Globe and Mail's front-page photograph was of a suspect who had been arrested that weekend for killing two Toronto prostitutes. "That was big news, big enough that the Globe made it the front page of their national edition. Yet when it came to the triple murder of three Saskatoon women, they gave it a few lines every once and a while but nothing very serious. There is something very fundamentally wrong with that," he says.

As part of his research, Goulding spoke with the families of the victims. For the most part, he found them to be very open and articulate, perhaps in reaction to the misconceptions and lack of attention directed towards themselves and their departed relatives. "I found that the families without exception were open to my interest in the story. I think they regarded it as something positive and healthy that someone did care about them."

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