On February 14th, more than 1,200 people
gathered at the intersection of Main and
Hastings streets in Vancouver’s downtown
Eastside for the 25th Annual Women’s
Memorial March. Thousands more joined
in dozens of cities across Canada, along with
some cities in the United States, for similar
marches to draw attention to a cross-country
humanitarian crisis that is being ignored
by the government of Canada: the issue of
missing and murdered Native women.
According to the Native Women’s Association
of Canada (NWAC), there are more than
600 unsolved cases of missing or murdered
Indigenous women across the country since
the 1980s. In 2014, the RCMP released the
report, “Missing and Murdered Aboriginal
Women: A National Operational Overview”
acknowledging the problem. It summarized
that between 1980 and 2012 police-recorded
incidents of Aboriginal female homicides and
unresolved missing Aboriginal females in its
review totaled 1,181 – 164 missing and 1,017
homicide victims. This has obviously been
a critical issue for Indigenous communities
across the country, and families have
continued to demand accountability from the
different police forces and different levels of
government.
In every possible way, the Harper Conservative
government has shown its contempt for
the fight for justice of Indigenous people
across Canada. In 2010, the Conservative
government cut all funding to Sisters in
Spirit, NWAC’s ground-breaking program
which conducted research and funded action
to solve the issue of missing and murdered
Indigenous women. The Conservative
government justified the cuts by saying “it is
time to move to action, by taking the research
and implementing it on the streets”. But, in
the years following, Indigenous women have
continued to be murdered and gone missing
and the government of Canada has continued
to do nothing. In December 2014, Stephen
Harper made the government of Canada’s
feelings about the matter crystal clear. When
he was asked during a year-end interview with
CBC about a public inquiry in to missing and
murdered Aboriginal women, he said, “Um it,
it isn’t really high on our radar, to be honest ...
Our ministers will continue to dialogue with
those who are concerned about this.”
As the murders and disappearances continue to
mount, more and more pressure is being placed
on the federal government to act. A recent
report by the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights (IACHR), which is affiliated
with the Organization of American States
(OAS) has called for a national-level action
plan and public inquiry in to the issue of
missing and murdered Indigenous women and
girls. This echoes James Anaya’s call, the UN’s
special rapporteur on Indigenous Rights who
recently release his report on his findings of
Canada’s failure of Indigenous people in this
country. On February 9
th
, the Stephen Harper
Conservative government agreed to have two
of its federal cabinet ministers meet with
premiers and Indigenous leaders in Ottawa
later this month to address the issue. However,
the government rejected the requests for
financial help to make the meeting possible.
Given the Conservative government’s attacks
on every aspect of Indigenous people’s
lives – from self-determination, to land and
resources, to the legacy of residential schools,
to education, healthcare and housing—we
cannot expect that the government of Canada
will pursue an honest and sincere inquiry in to
the murders and disappearances of so many
Native women. If they will not, we need to
demand an independent public inquiry, one
that is completely possible and can bring
solutions to the tragedy that Canada has
created and continues to ignore.
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