Please remember Diana Rattlesnake

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/10/2024 (426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We are approaching 20 years since Diana Rattlesnake was murdered in Brandon. I knew her and I am writing to make a plea that she be remembered. I see in her story the plight of MMIWG – missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. I also see how racial stereotyping limits our understanding and hampers our finding solutions. And I see in her story universal themes and I invite readers to try and see larger perspectives.

What happened? On Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, Rattlesnake was found dead of blunt force trauma in her residence in a rooming house on the 400 block of 11th St. She was 48. The police reported the injury was not consistent with a fall; it was homicide. The police investigation failed to find the culprit and the case remains unsolved two decades later.

At the time of her murder, Rattlesnake was working at the Westman Recycling material recovery facility, where I was the general manager.

To write this column, I reread media reports and also watched an episode of the APTN TV series “Taken” that featured Rattlesnake. It aired in 2019 and is available now on YouTube. I also looked again at our workplace records, which I kept.

In October 2004, Rattlesnake had been working for five months at Westman Recycling. She was one of two dozen employees. Sorting recyclables is labour intensive and our non-profit organization provided a workplace for many. Folks did community service, worked off fines, got work experience and — like Rattlesnake — participated in regular employment.

I looked at Rattlesnake’s work on the timesheets for her last full two-week pay period. She was at work every day. She took advantage of an opportunity to work extra hours for overtime pay. Rattlesnake sometimes opted to work in the part of the facility where employees pulled recyclables from residential garbage moving on a conveyor belt. This was more difficult than sorting recyclables and earned a shift premium.

Rattlesnake phoned in to work the morning of Monday, Oct. 25. She told me that she would be away that day and the next day. Many of our employees were struggling and we were flexible in allowing for personal time off without pay. So an employee phoning in to take a couple of days off was not remarkable.

She never returned to work. When we later learned what had happened to her, we were, of course, shocked and saddened.

Rattlesnake grew up on the Waywayseecappo First Nation. She married and had three children. In an interview with the CBC, Rattlesnake’s daughter Anna Hanska remembered her mother fondly.

“My mom was a happy person. She was always laughing, joking around, always taking care of her family.”

But Rattlesnake’s life was wracked by an addiction to alcohol and involvement in abusive, violent relationships. She endured years of abuse from her husband, during which she made suicide attempts. In 1987, she shot and killed him.

At that time, she was known as Wilma Ann Haska. Sentenced in court in Brandon to four years in prison, she served her time in Portage la Prairie. When she got out of prison, she moved to Brandon and started a new life with the name Diana Rattlesnake.

Now for my comments about racial stereotyping. I think that some people reading this will be inclined to dismiss Rattlesnake’s death as just another example of MMIWG. But I invite readers to go beyond the label and to see Rattlesnake as an individual and as a fellow member of the community.

All of us likely know people among our extended family, friends and acquaintances who suffer from an addiction. And all of us also likely know people who have made unwise decisions about personal relationships. Please try to see Rattlesnake in that human light and not simply as a racial stereotype.

There is another negative aspect of racial stereotyping. American commentators have noted that often news reports about homicides in the regular media and in true crime podcasts focus on white people. These include photogenic young women who are victims and horrific serial killers who are perpetrators. But this portrayal distorts the reality that both the victims and the perpetrators of violent crime are likely to be regular people and also disproportionately to be people of colour.

I think that a similar dynamic is going on here. Specifically, there is an inordinate attention paid to serial killers — usually non-Indigenous — who murder Indigenous girls and women. We have seen this in Manitoba with the huge amount of news coverage devoted to a Winnipeg serial killer and the discussion of searching a landfill.

Winnipeg professor and columnist Niigaan Sinclair commented on the violence done to Indigenous women in a 2022 column in the Free Press and The Brandon Sun.

“While some perpetrators are Indigenous men,” Sinclair wrote, “the worst and most extensive examples of violence are committed by non-Indigenous men.”

The idea that non-Indigenous men cause “the worst and most extensive” violence and so merit the most public attention is wrong. Besides being gratuitously racist, this idea is wrong for two reasons. One: this idea downplays the horror of being the victim of violence caused by someone the victim knows. Two: this idea distorts the picture for individuals, agencies and citizens interested in preventative solutions. Emphasizing “stranger danger” takes attention away from the more common peril found in everyday relationships.

The Winnipeg serial killer and landfill search are not typical of cases of Indigenous women and girls who are victims of abuse and murder. And the attention given to the calculated, lurid exploits of a serial killer takes attention away from more quotidian situations. Especially the everyday homicides of Indigenous — and indeed all — women caught up in abusive relationships and unplanned, often alcohol-fuelled, violence. I am afraid that the attention given to the sensational cases robs attention from stories like Rattlesnake’s.

Words and descriptions matter. I am concerned about the tone of much discussion about domestic violence, especially regarding Indigenous women. The emphasis tends to be on historical forces like racism and colonialism that led to our society today.

Of course historical forces are important. But we are more than just the victims of history. People live in the present. And individuals can see themselves as empowered to take actions that are possible to improve their relationships and their lives. Women — and also men — can seek to avoid poisonous relationships. They can seek help when problems like addiction and out-of-control anger rear their ugly heads.

In a CBC interview, Rattlesnake’s son Jeremy Hanska faulted the police for not paying more attention and not doing more to solve his mother’s murder.

“Probably because she’s aboriginal and she had her demons and they just saw her as a statistic and not as a human being.”

The police appeared to us to be thorough when they came to our workplace to question us after the murder. The Brandon police were featured in the “Taken” TV show describing their efforts over the years; the case is not closed. If anyone out there knows something, they should contact the Brandon police.

At this 20-year mark, please remember Diana Rattlesnake. Remember her as someone who is recalled fondly. Remember her as someone who tried to make as good a life as possible for herself and her family. Remember her as someone who struggled and struggled, sometimes overcoming obstacles, but in the end couldn’t struggle any longer.