OUTRAGE AT PAUL BAND AFTER RADIO STATION REPEATEDLY PLAYED RECORDING
CLAIMING THE ECSTASY VICTIMS DESERVED TO DIE

Lloyd Salteaux keeps trying to get his head around it.

"I just can't find the words to explain how much it hurts," the Paul
Band First Nation member says. "How can people say things like this
and how can a radio station broadcast it? Don't they have any compassion?"

The emotional wounds his community suffered last month by the
horrifying deaths of two teenage girls were ripped open again last
week following reports that Edmonton's Sonic 102.9 repeatedly played
a recording of someone claiming the teens deserved to die.

Even though very few actually heard the words that were said, the
mere suggestion that someone would be that crass, that tasteless, and
perhaps even blatantly racist, is enough to cause paroxysms of
outrage in the community.

The community on the eastern shore of Lake Wabamun, 60 km west of
Edmonton, was devastated by the deaths last month of 14-year-old Leah
Dominique House and Trinity Dawn Bird, 15.

The girls were among a group of teens who attended a wedding
reception on the reserve on March 21. Several of the kids became
violently ill and four were taken to hospital. The two girls never recovered.

Police said traces of the club drug ecstasy were found in their
systems, and within a few days a 16-year-old boy from the community
was arrested and charged with four counts of drug trafficking, two
counts of criminal negligence causing death and two counts of
criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

There's so much anger over the radio broadcast, said Paul Band
spokesman Dennis Paul, that the band administration has put a lawyer
on standby, waiting to see a transcript of the recording.

Paul wants to find out if there are any grounds to file a complaint
with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission,
which licenses broadcasters.

"We have to wait and see what the findings are," Paul said. "We will
address it then."

But the community isn't waiting. They're devastated and they're angry, he said.

"You'd never hear anybody saying anything like that if it was white
kids dying like that," said Salteaux, who's related to both girls.

"I thought racism was done with, in the past, but that's not how it looks now."

Outrage has reached the point that the radio station has sought legal
advice of its own.

Sonic programming director Al Ford said yesterday he couldn't comment
until he hears back from their lawyers. He can't even release a
transcript until he gets the green light.

However, Ford earlier said that the recording was taken off the air
and won't be played again. It was taken from a listener feedback line
and Ford said it does not reflect the views of the radio station.

But Muriel Stanley Venne, who founded the Institute for the
Advancement of Aboriginal Women, said it's understandable that Paul
Band members would sense underlying racism in the comments - and the
station's decision to broadcast them.

"I'm not surprised at all that people would react this way.
Aboriginal girls are stereotyped from the moment they're born," she
said. "Aboriginal women have a very difficult time because other
people are constantly making assumptions about them."

Stanley Venne recalled the uproar two years ago when a Calgary
magazine quoted an anonymous "fishing buddy" of then-premier Ralph
Klein, who claimed Klein's wife Colleen was keeping the premier from retiring.

"Once she stops being the premier's wife, she goes back to being just
another Indian," the source allegedly said.

Meanwhile, Salteaux says he and the rest of the community will
remember the girls for who they were, not how they died.

"They were good girls. They were in school. They were kind and
respectful. That's what I will remember."