Conspiracy of Silence: The Riveting, Real-Life Account of The [Helen Betty Osborne] Pas Murder and Cover-up that Rocked the Nation

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Four white boys. One Cree girl.

Four cowards. One warrior.

Two white boys given immunity, one acquitted, one handed a life (?) sentence. A stolen and erased Aboriginal sister joins her ancestors. An Aboriginal community saddened and silenced:

This is the Helen Betty Osborne murder, court case, and disgrace.

Journalist Lisa Priest starts her sympathetic and problematic book Conspiracy of Silence by saying, “November 13, 1971 was cold and miserable.”

The cold and misery continued for sixteen-years until the four white boys were finally taken to trial; and November 13, 2011 makes it 40 years since Osborne was killed. Really, the cold and misery started hundreds of years ago when white settlers from Britain and France invaded Turtle Island (now known as Canada).

Cold was the act of murder by four boys in Manitoba’s community known as The Pas. Cold was the conspiracy of silence by the white townspeople, police, and politicians of The Pas for sixteen years! Cold was the attitude and beliefs of white people before, during, and after Osborne’s murder. Cold is the reality of violence against Aboriginal women in Canada, USA, and the entire Western Hemisphere that goes uninvestigated and unpunished by police and governments.

Priest starts her account with the finding of Helen Betty Osborne’s body by a father and son on a fishing trip. Osborne’s naked body and black boots are all this writer wants to retell. Priest describes in detail the horrific scene of what was once a vibrant 19 year-old girl turned into a lifeless, unrecognizable body.

Pages fourteen to sixteen are hard to get through: descriptions of the body alongside police reports and views are shared. Pages fifty-six to sixty are even harder to read: the description of the events that happened before, during, and after the murder told alongside the coroner’s diagrams and analysis of the murder.

The sensationalist cover of the book is a warning in itself: a bloody screwdriver.

Priest started her reporting career at the Windsor Star, moved to the Ottawa Citizen, and later covered the Helen Betty Osborne murder case for the Winnipeg Free Press. Conspiracy of Silence, her first book, is the outgrowth of her coverage of Osborne’s brutal killing and the trial of her killers.

Doing what conventional journalists do, Priest, a white woman, gives you the dirt that most people want to read — it’s her training, her job, and her cultural background. There is a sympathetic tone throughout; there is good investigative work on every page; there is the sense of exposing a wrong that needs to be justified; but there is also Priest’s own unchecked assumptions and racism.

The “cold” in the first line of Priest’s book is transferred to her zombification of Aboriginal women:

Native women hung out on the streets…they had been waifs who had been turned out on the street either because their parents didn’t want them or because they cost too much to feed. They were neither beautiful nor attractive. They craved affection in any form…They were malnourished, with dried eyes, prematurely wrinkled faces, and round bellies due to starchy diets of bannock…They stood leaning sloppily to one side. Some of them sniffed glue to get over the beating from the night before, but all were helpless because they had nowhere to sleep except under the railroad bridge

At times like these you wonder what Priest is trying to do. Does justice come through villainous jabs? Is empathy practiced through disempowerment? Is truth to be exposed through sweeping, racist statements?

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