A Manitoba legislator was calling on the government of Canada to remove Stephen Brown’s poetry from the Parliamentary Poet Laureate’s site. Two poems written by Stephen Brown, formerly Steven Kummerfield, have now been taken off that website.

Nahanni Fontaine, a Manitoba MLA, says it’s an opportunity to live Reconciliation, acknowledge the genocide of Indigenous women, girls and two spirited persons while rejecting patriarchy, racism and misogyny.

Stephen Brown was once Steven Kummerfield. Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky were convicted of manslaughter in the beating death of an Indigenous woman. Pamela George was killed outside of Regina in 1995. Kummerfield was released on parole in November 2000.

An event at the University of Regina was recently cancelled when it came to light that a University of Toronto professor, George Elliot Clarke, slated to speak at the U of R, was going to read poetry written by Kummerfield.