Voices from the launch of the inquiry into missing, murdered indigenous women

“So I said, ‘What’s the use?’ The inquiry is useless to us”.

To him, the inquiry is the “opportunity to provide stories (and) the opportunity to review policies” that may have contributed to the disappearance or death of almost 1,200 indigenous females.

The Government of Nunavut weighed in on the inquiry August 3 in a carefully-worded statement that offered its cooperation with the federal inquiry, while chiding Ottawa on its choice of representative. We also heard clearly that it should be indigenous-led and that women should play a major role.

It was an emotional moment for everyone: for THE families of missing loved ones, for the newly named commissioners tasked with overseeing the almost two-and-a-half-year investigation and for the staunch advocates who have, for years, been pushing for a comprehensive inquiry into why aboriginal women are so often the victims of violent crimes.

The official number of missing or murdered indigenous women is 1200, but the Minister of the Status of Women, Patricia Hajdu acknowledged it could be over 4,000 over the decades.

A few recent cases underpin those concerns.

Marion Buller, the first indigenous woman to be named a judge in Canada’s westernmost British Columbia province in 1994, will chair the five-member commission.

“This isn’t just about some neutral policing policies that – oops – happen to have an impact on First Nations. When people die in police custody, when people are sexually abused in police custody, that’s something that shouldn’t be happening in a country like Canada”, she said.

For it to succeed, all Canadians must support this effort through listening, understanding, and showing compassion for the survivors, for the families suffering loss, for those who were disregarded when they went to police and reported a missing indigenous woman only to be told “she will probably turn up”. “They wanted those reopened”.

The inquiry is scheduled to start in September and continue to the end of 2018. But critics point out that those recommendations aren’t binding – which some fear could mean they get brushed aside.

She says she’s concerned the inquiry could focus on the systemic issues without fixing them, and urged the government to make a plan for implementing the findings _ including more than 700 recommendations already generated from other reports. “We have unsolved murders here”, Doyle-Bedwell said.

“They may not be flawless, but we’re off to a solid start”, said Ernie Crey, Chief of the Cheam First Nation in B.C. It will be an important opportunity for reconciliation to move forward in a significant way. In 2007, Amnesty International released a report (“Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA”) which led to US federal laws allowing for prosecution of domestic violence perpetrators against indigenous peoples in tribal courts.

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

For Dianne BigEagle, the search for her missing daughter has continued every day for almost 10 years. She often drives around the outskirts of Regina looking for signs of her daughter, and she still posts flyers around town.

“It’s like going to a big mall, see your child go running and never see them again – you feel that helpless”, Okemow said at a Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations event in Saskatoon.

Having said that, the minister did throw her support behind the cause.

“It hurts”, Tolley said, with tears streaming down her face.