By VANESSA DIETZ

vdietz@mininggazette.com

BARAGA – A couple hundred people clad in purple honored domestic violence victims and survivors at the Keweenaw Bay Community College in Baraga Saturday.

Most of the participants in the eighth annual Chelsey LaFernier Memorial Walk awareness event walked together in matching event T-shirts through the neighborhood and past the house where the KBIC member was murdered by someone she’d been dating in 2009.

“Find the strength to fight domestic violence in the community,” said LaFernier’s sister Lily Marcotte. “This is a venue of hope. We want you to remember Chelsey in her life, bringing happiness. She didn’t have the resources to leave. Domestic violence is all around us.”

Marcotte advised the community members to call the KBIC Office of Violence Against Women’s 24-hour helpline at 353-4599. “Someone is always there, any time of the day or night.”

In a traditional native tobacco ceremony, tribal member Debi Williamson prayed to tribal elder spirits in Ojibwe for assistance.

“I asked our grandmas and grandpas to come and help us with what we’re doing here today,” Williamson said, as the sun finally broke through the clouds Saturday afternoon, warming up the walkers. “Ask for the prayers to come help heal us.”

Williamson later deposited the tobacco, a bit of which everyone had held during the prayer, in Keweenaw Bay, where she prayed again.

The march ended at the Community College, where KBIC President Chris Swartz and local drummers and singers Summer Cloud welcomed everyone to the Niwiin Akeaa gym.

Summer Cloud members Alden Connor and son Alden Connor, LeRoy Gauthier, Raistlin Awonohopay, Marty Curtis and Donovin Awonohopay sang a few songs, beating a single, large drum encircled by protective cedar tips laying on the floor around them.

“We are very serious about protecting our Indian women here on the L’Anse Indian Reservation,” Swartz said of Michigan’s oldest and largest reservation, after welcoming everyone and expressing his condolences to LaFernier’s family.

Following a community feast, Teri Jendusa Nicolai, of Watertown, Wisconsin, described how she survived a near-death experience at the hands of her former spouse on Jan. 31, 2004 – the third anniversary of their divorce.

“By the grace of God, number one,” said a smiling Nicolai, who delivers about 20 speeches a year to try to help others become aware of potential dangerous signs in their households. “Control and isolation those are warning signs. I want to give people the tools to see what an unhealthy relationship is (so they are) able to get out.”

On that fateful day, Nicolai was picking up her then 4- and 6-year-old daughters from their father’s house when her ex-husband tried to kill her by attacking her with a baseball bat. Since the divorce, Nicolai had remarried and was pregnant with her new husband’s baby.

“I lost the baby,” she said.

Having been hit in the head several times. Nicolai couldn’t believe she had the presence of mind to position herself feet-first when her ex stuffed her in a large Rubbermaid garbage can, later leaving her for dead in an unheated storage facility in the dead of winter. Besides being semiconscious, she also had her cell phone with her. While calls to 911 spurred police officers into action, it took them 26 hours to find Nicolai, who’d been unable to tell them exactly where she was, other than being transported in a garbage can in the back of a truck after a brutal attack.

She has had numerous surgeries on her feet and lost all of her toes due to frostbite.

Nicolai remains happily married. Her daughters, 17 and 19 now, join 9-year-old Ben, who was born a couple years after the incident.

Incarcerated in Boscobel, Wisconsin, her ex-husband is serving a life sentence.

While people in crisis can always call 911, Dial Help at 482-HELP (4357) in addition to KBIC’s helpline, several area women’s shelters also provide a wide range of services, including emergency shelter to domestic violence victims. Call the Baraga County Shelter Home at 524-7078, or the Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter at 888-337-5623 for services in Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties.