I’m a Canadian settler. My paternal ancestors settled on Turtle island (aka North America) before Canadian Confederation.
Canadian government policies are continuing Canada’s Indigenous genocide today. It is *not* something in the past. It is something that needs to stop.
Now.
It is not going to stop so long as settlers continue being afraid to acknowledge it for what it is.
Carol Eugene Park: ‘The Time for Talk Is Over’: Survivors React to the Missing Women’s Inquiry. Systemic colonial violence creates genocide against Indigenous Peoples, says final report. he hundreds of recommendations for Canadian society and government by the National Inquiry of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are in response to what is properly called genocide, said a First Nations lawyer at a press conference in Vancouver Monday.
The inquiry report’s use of the term genocide to describe what it called systematic race- and gender-based violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people was hotly debated on social media since the report’s leak on Friday.
But Sharon McIvor, Nlaka’pamux from the Lower Nicola Indian Band and an activist, lawyer and college professor said, “It was good to acknowledge that what’s been happening for the last 200 years is genocide.”
McIvor said Canada must acknowledge its role in creating and perpetuating the colonial structures that have led to the high murder rates Indigenous women and girls have and continue to face.
“They have a huge role to play to put us where we are, and they have a role to play to get us back from where we are,” McIvor said. “I call on the government to take [the report] seriously and tomorrow make me equal to my male counterparts in law.”
The inquiry’s report, released Monday, is 1,200 pages long and contains 231 recommendations the inquiry says will end violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
The recommendations include calls for action on human rights, policing, the justice system, corrections, health care, education, media, social work and child welfare.
“He gave us this national inquiry of MMIWG,” Williams said. “However, he approved the pipelines to go into Mother Earth, raping her and creating more places for women to go missing and be murdered along these pipelines? It is a known fact that our Indigenous women and girls go missing and are murdered along these pipelines.”
Williams said Trudeau does not represent Indigenous peoples in Canada, or the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. “We are the original nations of Turtle Island,” she said.
The introduction to the inquiry’s report reads, “The fact that this National Inquiry is happening now doesn’t mean that Indigenous peoples waited this long to speak up; it means it took this long for Canada to listen.”
But that statement falls short for Summer-Rain Bentham, manager at Battered Women’s Support Services.
“Listening is not action,” she said. “Listening does not stop men from being able to target and harm Indigenous women and girls, trans, and two-spirit with near impunity.”
Bentham said the ongoing disappearance and murder of women and girls since the inquiry’s start three years ago is evidence that Canada is ignoring the genocide against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Implementing the calls to justice are the first steps Canada can take to show that “Indigenous women and girls are valuable, sacred,” Bentham said.
“Our sisters and two-spirit relatives who have been missing or murdered — they paid with their lives for this movement. They gave their lives so that we would be able to fight for the safety of other Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit folks…. We have a responsibility to them.”
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, was the final speaker to respond to the National Inquiry of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
He said real change must be fought for, and Canada’s genocidal history described in the report must be acknowledged.
“It’s our responsibility to hold all governments at all levels to account, to ensure that the recommendations of this report do not gather dust on some bureaucratic shelf in Ottawa like the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,” he said.
Phillip criticized Trudeau for what he said were his lack of concrete solutions to Canada’s genocidal history and present.
“We can’t allow Prime Minister Trudeau to prance in here and offer good intentions,” Phillip said. “We need action. Enough talk, enough consultation. The time for talk is over, now is the time for action. It’s our responsibility to ensure that happens.”
By Courtney Skye June 4
Courtney Skye is Mohawk, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a research fellow at Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-led policy think tank at the Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University.
This week, family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people, survivors of violence, community activists and Indigenous leaders gathered in Ottawa for the release of “Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” They were there to acknowledge the inquiry’s work in a collective ceremony to honor the lives of those who have experienced violence. It was an demonstration of the love that exists within Indigenous communities for Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people — and a recognition of the overwhelming levels of violence they have had to endure for generations.
The report, released Monday, finds that “persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence.” The inquiry concluded that Canada has committed a genocide against the Indigenous peoples within its colonial borders, and is continuing to maintain systems and structures that result in Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people experiencing a disproportionate amount of violence.
Even with a two-year mandate, the inquiry was unable to determine a definitive number of Indigenous people who are missing or have been murdered. But Indigenous women were reported to be at least six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women.
The new report, which consists of more than 1,200 pages, contains hundreds of calls for justice that methodically address the interrelated ways Canadian and Indigenous structures, programs and services must change to promote the substantive equality of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people. These calls include establishing a “National Indigenous and Human Rights Ombudsperson” and a “National Indigenous Human Rights Tribunal,” developing and implementing a national action plan, and providing long-term funding for educational programs and violence prevention campaigns.
The report affirms what Indigenous people have long understood — that the violence they experience is a product of settler colonialism. The continuation of the Canadian settler state requires the destabilization of Indigenous communities — and a part of this stabilization has involved rampant gender-based violence to uphold the legitimacy of the settler state’s rule over land and water.
While settler colonialism impacts Indigenous peoples of all genders, it makes women, girls and Two-Spirit people especially vulnerable to violence. In 1924, the Canadian state imposed a government structure within First Nations communities, removing their traditional leadership. And since 1876, Canada has enforced the Indian Act, which at times forced “Indian” women out of leadership positions and removed their legal status if they chose to go to university or marry a non-Indigenous person, or if their fathers chose to enfranchise them. The sex-based discrimination in the Indian Act is identified as one of the root causes of violence toward First Nations women in the report.
Over time, advancements in the rights of Indigenous peoples have resulted in Supreme Court challenges and findings of discrimination from international bodies. However, Canada has maintained a state definition of “Status Indians,” defining membership in communities from outside the norms and traditions of those people, and has yet to fully eliminate how these structures perpetuate sex-based discrimination.
The national inquiry report outlines in great detail how the nature of settler colonialism in Canada has evolved into an insidious and distinctly Canadian social reality that ignores reports of brutal murders and missing persons, even as these numbers reached alarming levels.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples sets a minimum standard for the recognition of their collective rights and sees improvement in the lives of Indigenous peoples as contingent upon their ability to exercise self-determination. Now, the inquiry’s report makes clear that responding to the calls for justice and undertaking actions to end violence require restoring Indigenous jurisdiction in ways that prioritize the safety of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.
For too long, our communities have feared that shedding light on violence would undermine Indigenous leadership. Communities have viewed crises as something that must remain hidden in order for Indigenous structures to be restored, and enduring the violence we experience has been seen as the cost of nation-building.
The inquiry has established that violence in Indigenous communities and the ongoing refusal to recognize Indigenous-led ways of governance reinforce one another, to the benefit of the settler state. Immediate action on the calls for justice is needed in order to protect Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people. We must be able to not only express our aspirations openly but also confront our challenges and seek our own solutions to the issues we face, including gender-based violence. As Indigenous communities continue to assert their sovereignty, the role of the paternalistic settler state must be limited and clearly defined.
The release of the final report marks a pivotal moment in the recognition and advancement of the individual and collective rights of Indigenous people. As Indigenous people continue to overcome the violence and trauma instilled in their communities by a settler state, the inquiry insists “the exclusion of Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA people, Elders, and children from the exercise of Indigenous self-determination must end.” Honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people requires it.
Today the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women And Girls report was released.
The inquiry’s final report, released publicly this morning with more than 200 recommendations to the federal government, calls violence against First Nations, Metis and Inuit women and girls a form of “genocide” and a crisis that has been “centuries in the making.”
“As the evidence demonstrates, human rights and Indigenous rights abuses and violations committed and condoned by the Canadian state represent genocide against Indigenous women, girls, and (LGBTQ and two-spirit) people,” it concludes.
And Canadian racists are arguing that it isn’t genocide.