Article content

For all the failures, individual and systemic, that marked the life and egregious death of Tina Michelle Fontaine, the greatest is that so many people and agencies were unable to see the tiny girl as the complete and worthy human being she was.

She was Indigenous, and somehow, that meant she didn’t matter.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Christie Blatchford: Tina was 5-3, 78 pounds and invisible to those who should have helped her Back to video

Tina’s body, wrapped in a blanket and weighted down with rocks, was recovered from the Red River in Winnipeg on Aug. 17, 2014.

Photo by Facebook

Her death brought to the fore what Manitoba’s advocate for children and youth, Daphne Penrose, called “a churning anger of a nation enraged.”

As Penrose said in her report, released Tuesday, on Tina’s death, “One thing we know to be true, and which you will read about in Tina’s story is that she carried a burden that was not her own.”

That burden is the history of colonization and the legacy of trauma. Penrose doesn’t say it, but the burden includes racism.

Tina’s parents were marked, ruined, by it all.