Canada’s treatment of Indigenous women and girls is genocide, a national inquiry has found, and a St. Albert student says it’s up to all Canadians to take a stand against it.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report Monday at a ceremony in Gatineau, Que. More than three years in the making, the 1,200-page report is the most comprehensive investigation yet into why thousands of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women have been murdered or gone missing in recent decades.
The report noted that Indigenous women are 16 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than Caucasian women in Canada and three times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than non-Indigenous women.
The report found that the same racist beliefs that led to the Sixties Scoop and the residential school systems had combined with sexism to create social and economic marginalization amongst Indigenous women, making them more likely to be in situations of insecurity where they would be raped, killed, or disappeared, and less likely to be helped by the justice system.
“Just being Indigenous and female makes you a target,” the inquiry found.
Chief commissioner Marion Buller said that this violence against Indigenous women was the result of a “significant, persistent, and deliberate pattern” of human rights violations perpetuated by the Canadian government to eradicate their existence as a nation.
“This is genocide.”
The report laid out 231 calls to action to stop this violence – none of which were optional, the report noted, as they were based on Canada’s obligations under local and international law.
Paul Kane student Hannah Nash (an Indigenous woman who founded a missing and murdered Indigenous walk in St. Albert last year) called on everyone to read the report and its recommendations, especially the eight targeted at all Canadians.
“We need to reconcile our relations to completely heal ourselves and our communities, and we can’t do that without non-Indigenous people.”
Lives of fear
The report found that Indigenous women in Canada “live with an almost constant threat to their physical, emotional, economic, social and cultural security” due to repeated acts of violence against them, and that those who reached out to police or social services for help received only blame or indifference.
Brandy Poorman, an off-reserve member of the Alexander First Nation, said she had encountered many cases as a court co-ordinator with Alberta Courts where Indigenous women were treated with neglect or contempt by the justice system.
One recent example was Cindy Gladue, who was found dead in an Edmonton motel room in 2011. Court officials repeatedly referred to her not by name but as a “native prostitute” in the trial of the man accused of murdering her, and – in a move that sparked national outrage – presented her vaginal tissue as evidence.
“Canada victimized Cindy all over again,” said Poorman, who helped the Gladue family organize national protests over this case. The Supreme Court recently ordered a new trial of this case in large part due to this racist treatment.
Poorman said these realities mean she’s had to tell her young daughter that she could be targeted for murder simply because she was First Nations.
“I shouldn’t be having that conversation with my daughter.”
Stand up for women
The report calls for reforms at all levels of government, including national action plans to address violence against Indigenous women, anti-racism training for police, and the creation of a national task force to review and re-investigate all unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
The eight recommendations targeted at all Canadians call on them to be a “strong ally” of Indigenous women by speaking out against racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia wherever it occurs, learning about Indigenous history, and demanding governments follow through on the report’s calls to action.
“The murders, the abductions, the human trafficking, the beatings, the rapes, the violence, and yes, the genocide, will continue unless all Canadians find the strength and courage to build a new decolonized relationship with each other based on respect and self-determination,” Buller said.
Nash said people could start by taking part in the second-annual missing and murdered Indigenous women walk in Lions Park on June 23 just prior to St. Albert’s National Aboriginal Day celebration.
“People need to understand that this isn’t something that’s going to go away,” she said.
“You started it. You need to end it.”
The inquiry’s report can be found at www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report.
