‘Chantel Was Sunshine’: Centralizing Indigenous Mothering in an Honouring Story of Chantel Moore

Content warning: This article deals with police violence and physical harm.

Excerpt from: Josephine Savarese, “’Chantel Was Sunshine’: Centralizing Indigenous Mothering in an Honouring Story of Chantel Moore” in Jennifer Brant and D. Memee Lavall-Harvard, eds., Rematriating Justice: Honouring the Lives of Our Indigenous Sisters. Demeter Press, forthcoming June 2024.

Given the approaching anniversary, it is time to honour aspects of the life story of Chantel Moore, a young Indigenous mother who passed from this physical world on June 4, 2020, in Edmundston, New Brunswick, from gunshots fired at close range by law enforcement. This horrific incident highlights the urgency of systemic transformation to address the normalization of police violence in criminal legal systems. To pay tribute to this young mother, it is time to amplify the alarm sounded by the Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nation Hawiih (Hereditary Chiefs) and Elected Council who denounced the killing saying, “No one needs to give up their life on a wellness check — NO ONE.” In a time of grief and devastation, Chantel Moore’s mother, Martha Martin, demanded justice for her daughter in interviews with news reporters. She persists in her advocacy so that “her daughter has a voice.” Martha Martin stated that she felt like she was being pushed to “forget” that her daughter was fatally shot. She worried that “not enough” was being said on her daughter’s behalf. As a result, she acted as “the voice” for her daughter. 

Over the four years since the fatality, Chantel Moore’s family and community have acted to bring significance to her life. It is time to renew the calls to denounce the inadequate responses by government and policing agencies as well as the muted public outcry to the fatality. For example, limited disciplinary action was taken against the police officer. On July 4, 2020, only weeks after the shooting, he returned to the force in an administrative role following a brief paid leave of absence. In June 2021, the Government of New Brunswick’s Public Prosecutions Service publicized its decision not to pursue criminal charges based on a review that determined that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction. More recently, the shooting was described as a homicide by a May 2022 inquest.

As the anniversary approaches, it is time to remember the Moore, Martin family, community, elected leaders, council members, friends, and allies who continue to demand justice for a mother who relocated to New Brunswick to shelter and guide her then five-year-old daughter. As the Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nation Hawiih (Hereditary Chiefs) and Elected Council stated in their call for murder charges against the officer: “We are all humans and not animals… we expect to be treated with honour and not anger”. 

Given the outrage connected to this death, it is understandable that Annie Bernard Daisley, then-president of the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association, issued a call in July 2020 that governments denounce the violence directed towards Indigenous people. She stated: “You have treated our lives as though we are disposable, that we do not matter. Our lives come and go to you. We are just a number. You took from us and you still do. You do it quietly and secretly. You hide behind inquiries, you hide behind the police force, you hide behind a ‘knife’, you hide your hate. But we see and feel it.”

Chantel Moore’s violent death can also be explored alongside Andrea J. Ritchie’s findings in Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Colour. For Ritchie, the devaluation of Indigenous women is a factor in deadly policing encounters. Ritchie and others are urging a shift towards an increased focus on violence towards Black, Indigenous, and women of colour as a topic deserving of greater attention and advocacy. Ritchie maintains that stories and accounts of police violence against women are important to amplify “because the lives and experiences of Black women, Native women, and women of colour matter”. Her words affirm Chantel Moore’s life story and this study of the lethal force that caused her death. Ritchie’s comment that “forms of police violence uniquely or disproportionately experienced by women” as well as the “contexts” in which women regularly encounter police “need to be subject to greater scrutiny” supports the significance of this call to commemorate Chantel Moore.

This violence can be theorized through the work of Australian anthropologist, Amanda Kearney. In her 2021 article “To Cut Down the Dreaming: Epistemic Violence, Ambivalence and the Logic of Coloniality”, Kearney describes the long-lasting, even permanent consequences of settler violence (312-34). In response to the inaction and weak response by the state agents authorized to deliver justice, it is a worthy time to ponder Kearney’s query: “Why [is] greater value … not seen in Indigenous lifeworlds?” This concern is presented as one that is “worth asking” in the “context of a study of violence”. As such, it is a provocative reflection for this study on the murder of a Tla-o-qui-aht mother, shot during a “wellness check.”

While it is not possible to return the Dreaming Ancestor or a human being to a state of vitality, Kearney reminds us—with cautious optimism—that “the potency of the Dreaming returns time and again” (324). This is so because the Dreaming is “immutable, despite having been desecrated in its physical form” (324). In a similar tone, Chantel Moore’s family has emphasized her continued presence in their lives. At her funeral in New Brunswick, in memoriam, Chantel’s spirit was honoured and reassured that her physical being would “never be forgotten”; she would “always be remembered as the sweetest soul” who now watched over the family. Although her earthly body had passed, her spirit was assured that “no one” would “ever replace” the physical being that her family mourned and remembered. 

In contrast to the family’s regard for Chantel Moore and outrage regarding the fatality, the New Brunswick government described the shooting in muted terms as an “unfortunate tragedy” even while it “found no criminal conduct” by the constable in his actions on June 4, 2020 (Government of New Brunswick, “Review”). This pronouncement and others minimized the community and family’s grief and outrage. Expanding on Kearney’s reasoning, it is through official statements like these that the epistemic violence shown in her 2021 text is realized and implemented. This violence takes place when “a group’s ability to speak or be heard is damaged, when the very existence of other ways of knowing are denied or obliterated by the dominant majority.”

In the June 2021 statement by Public Prosecutions Services, the circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Moore were described as “tragic.” It was acknowledged that Chantel Moore was a “beloved daughter, mother, sister and friend” (Government of New Brunswick, “Statement”). Overall, the findings were unacceptable to the family and community. Grace Frank, Chantel Moore’s grandmother, expressed outrage regarding the failure to pursue criminal charges against the officer, stating there was “a lot more to the story”. Grace Frank saw her granddaughter’s body before the burial and came away with unanswered questions, particularly regarding her injuries. She asked, “Why did she have a broken leg? Why did she have a broken arm? Why were there bruises on her body?” Frank was troubled by the “bruises around her waist and inside of her thighs.” In Frank’s assessment, the injuries made it appear as though “something happened to her before they killed her.”

It is time to affirm the greater valuing of Indigenous women and mothers to dismantle colonial projections of Indigenous women, mothers, and girls as menacing, degenerate, and threatening. This was the case in the shooting of Chantel Moore under review here. Supporters have expressed outrage that she was described as intimidating even while her leg was broken, her body was bruised, and her back and torso were riddled with at least four bullets, with more suspected by the family. In contrast to these narratives, a firekeeper at the funeral and ceremony held in New Brunswick in June 2020 stated: “Chantel was love. She was sunshine.”

Josephine Savarese is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, St. Thomas University, Fredericton. An earlier version of the paper was shared with students in the Environmental Praxis Class (ENVS 3023) instructed by Tracy Glynn. Josephine wishes to thank fellow panelists Wolastoq Grand Council Chief Ron Tremblay and Wolastoq grandmother Alma Brooks.