Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George
![handle is hein.journals/cjls15 and id is 357 raw text is: Gendered Pc, cicl Violence and Spalializecl Justice:
Re Murder of Pamela Geo'qe
Sherene H. Razack
To unmap literally is to denaturalise
geography, hence to undermine
world views that rest upon it.
Richard Phillips1
Introduction
On Easter weekend, April 17, 1995, Pamela George, a woman of the
Saulteaux (Ojibway) nation and a mother of two young children, was
brutally murdered in Regina, a small Canadian prairie city. Beyond the
fact that Pamela George came from the Sakimay reserve on the outskirts
of the city, and that she occasionally worked as a prostitute, something
she was doing that Easter weekend, court records of the trial of the two
white men accused of her murder and media coverage of the event reveal
few details of her life or the life of her community. More is known about
her two murderers, young white, middle-class men. Easter marked the
first weekend since the end of their university exams. There was a week
or so of freedom before summer jobs began. Nineteen-year-old
university athletes Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky set out to
celebrate the end of term. They went out drinking in isolated areas under
bridges and behind hockey arenas, and then cruised 'the Stroll,' the city's
streets of prostitution. Eventually, after failing to persuade one
Aboriginal woman working as a prostitute to join them in the car, one
man hid in the trunk. Approaching her twice and being refused twice,
they finally succeeded in persuading another Aboriginal woman, Pamela
* I would like to thank Mona Oikawa, Leslie Thielen-Wilson and, especially, Sheila
Gill, for outstanding research assistance, insight and dedication, Barbara Buckman
for her help in thinking through these ideas, the students of the OISEf/UT Race and
Space graduate course, and the works-in-progress group of the Western Law
Professors of Colour Conference, Hawaii 2000 (especially Adrienne Davis and John
Calmore) for useful critical feedback.
1 R. Phillips, Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (New York:
Routledge, 1997) at 147 [hereinafter Phillips].
Canadian Journal of Law and Society/Revue canadienne droit et socigt,
2000, Volume 15, no. 2, pp. 91-130.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cjls15&div=19&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George
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