Amanda Nahwegahbow, a member of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, was known for being tough; resilient. She loved sketching and drawing, an artistic personality who made her own clothes and was known to Alexandera Wemigwans, her younger sister, as a “champion,” in her younger days.
But just four days ago, the night of Jan. 12, Nahwegahbow died in the Energy Court encampment off Lorne Street. A mother of three, she was only 38 years old.
Nahwegahbow had been living in a nylon tent propped up against a metal hydro box. It’s hidden from the wind, but also, from sight. That includes the many other tents and the view from the windows at the warming centre, which doesn’t quite catch it either.
Though Greater Sudbury Fire and Police Services arrived within four minutes of being dispatched, finding the fire already extinguished by others using their bare hands and the snow that blankets the ground, her body was so badly burned from the fire lit for warmth that police could not even identify her gender at first.
Though it is still unclear how she died, in the hours that followed, police stated they had spoken with her next of kin and released her age and gender, but nothing else. It was at the request of the family.
But on Jan. 15, her family came together with a few dozen outreach workers, friends and allies to mourn her passing at the exact place she died. A chance to weep for her, and to remember her in “the good times,” said Wemigwans, it was also a chance for her Anishinaabe family to remember her in their own way, by offering tobacco at the place she died.
For many who attended the memorial service, the -25 weather was a chance to truly feel the cold that would move someone to light a fire that might be unsafe; many commented on the cold and lamented how the temperature would drop once the bright sun went down, what that would mean for the encampment dwellers, gathered around a small burn barrel in the centre of the municipal land.
Wemigwans said her sister “struggled many years with schizophrenia,” which left her unable to manage her life, perhaps the start of the path that led her to where she was. She said her sister “wasn’t always herself,” but when she was: “she was so good, and so kind, and when she was on her meds she was so fun and loving. But when she was off meds…” Wemigwans trailed off, emotion catching the words in her throat.
After the memorial service, each attendee was offered strawberries (known as ode’min in Anishnaabemowin, or 'heartberry,' for its shape and cultural significance.) Each person smudged with sage, offered tobacco to the memorial site after her family did and ate one of the strawberries while facing each of the four directions: north, south, east, west.
Nahwegahbow’s mother wept with her whole body, her chest heaving and her face buried in the thick warm scarf that wrapped around her neck. Her family was at her side, Wemigwans said it was a combination of sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, cousins and friends from their community.
Nawegahbow was honoured with drum songs and words from her paternal aunt Virginia, who spoke the names of all their ancestors who had passed, to make way for Nawegahbow’s “next journey.”
“They will be waiting for her peace when she gets there,’hello, little girl, we have been waiting for you, it's so good that you arrived here,” she told the mourners. “Her life over there will be different, so much different than what we know: no hunger, no pain. Oh, such a wonderful thing she has crossed over.”
She said that while ceremony changes in each community —some families will feast in her memory a week from now, some a year, and others right away — she assured them all that there is no “right way” to grieve.
“Because she knows that we are here, she is looking down upon us, and she is so grateful that so many of us are here to honour her and to remember her.”
Jenny Lamothe covers vulnerable and marginalized populations, as well as housing issues and the justice system for Sudbury.com.