Canada launches inquiry into missing, murdered indigenous women

“The RCMP brushed us off and told us to come back in a week and that she was out drinking, celebrating her birthday”.

“It’s very hard because, once again, we’re not being heard by the government”, Kudloo said August 3.

Catcheway made a phone call to her mother on her 18th birthday saying she was on her way home to Portage la Prairie, Man.

It has not been easy for Goforth to stand up and speak about the issue, but she does so because she is determined to have her daughter remembered.

Canadian Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Carolyn Bennett, said a national, independent commission would begin working on what has been described as a “national human rights crisis” on September 1.

Bennett said the inquiry will reflect what the government heard during pre-inquiry consultations: that policing and child welfare policies will be put under the microscope, that it will not take a one-size-fits-all approach and will take into account regional differences when crafting recommendations. Many times they say they were dismissed, ignored, or just kept in the dark.

The collective mood at the unveiling of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls was pensive, solemn and gentle, but above all, buoyed by a certain brightness of spirit. Many cases where police agencies are in question must not be lost along this path. The average rating was 2.8.

“As the inquiry will seek to accomplish the development of strong recommendations, many feel that it will not attempt to seek justice for specific cases or correct an investigation to a case gone cold”, said Regional Chief Day.

While individual cases may come under the spotlight of the inquiry, officials say the true goal is to examine systemic issues.

Crey, whose sister Dawn Crey disappeared in November 2000, said he’d been speaking with others who were concerned about perceived shortcomings in the report.

“So we’re going to spend the next couple of years talking about it”.

Our commitment was reinforced when we released Walking Together: Ontario’s Long-Term Strategy to End Violence Against Indigenous Women. “We have unsolved murders here”, Doyle-Bedwell said.

“I don’t think it will make a difference”, he said.

Kelly White burns sage during a news conference regarding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Vancouver, B.C., Wednesday, August, 3, 2016.

Canada’s government has declared it will start a nationwide inquiry into the murders and disappearances of thousands of indigenous women over the past three decades across the country. This new commission will be able to refer cases to authorities, “like the attorney general or police, for more investigation”, says CBC News but they will not have the power to force police to reopen cases or charge anyone with a crime.

Concerns aside, Pauktuutit has said the organization is prepared to work with Robinson, although they have yet to get a chance to sit down with her.

“To me that’s a concern because it appears, anyway with the little I know, that it’s kind of pandering to the public”.

“They also, in doing so, have the ability to provide oversight and watch what happens to the referrals that they make”, she said.

But overall, she added, the inquiry is vindication for the years of work done by indigenous women, associations and activists who pushed for the government to act in some way on the issue. “I mean that’s what the inquiry is for”.