3/25/2005: Red Lake update
The Red Lake community has begun trying to move on a bit after Monday's horrific events with memorial services and funeral plans, and the names of the dead have been released. They were:
Daryl Lussier, 58
Michelle Leigh Sigana, 32
Derrick Brun, 28
Neva Rogers, 62
Dwayne Lewis, 15
Chase Lussier, 15
Alicia Spike, 14
Thurlene Stillday, 15
Chanelle Rosebear, 15
Jeffrey Weise, 16
Daryl Lussier & Michelle Sigana left behind a 13-year-old child. Chase Lussier had an infant son. Neva Rogers, a teacher at the school, likely saved several lives before losing her own: she herded students into a classroom when the shooting began. Twelve more students were injured; five remain hospitalized.
For the most part, mainstream news reports continue to omit the donation fund information - including those that mention the poverty on the reservation - and instead dwell on Weise's goth style, trenchcoat, and neo-nazi writings. The Smoking Gun has published a short, violent animation that Weise apparently made. Reporters need permission to enter the reservation, and the tribe appears divided between wanting to make as much information available as possible, and trying to avoid becoming another Columbine-like media feeding frenzy.
And there's at least one other community that's been shaken even more than the rest of us by the event, and that's an interactive fiction forum in which Weise participated. Its moderator has removed Weise's posts (wisely, in my opinion), but those there who knew Jeff Weise via the boards, email, or having written with him, were naturally shocked to have discovered that they have a personal connection to the tragedy in Minnesota. My thoughts continue to go out to the friends & families of the victims and the Red Lake community, and also to Bob and Dan and all the other virtual residents of the Rise of the Dead forum.
