TRC report re-ignites call for inquiry into missing, murdered women

The release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report June 2, and its assertion that Canada’s residential school system was a form of cultural genocide, drew applause from a crowd in Ottawa. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report released last week listed 94 recommendations on how different levels of government can embrace the principal of reconciliation with Aboriginal people.

But for a group representing Nunavut women, one of those recommendations stood out much more clearly than the rest.

The 41st of the report’s 94 recommendations calls on the Canadian government to launch a national inquiry into the country’s murdered and missing Indigenous women and to investigate the violence and its relationship to the “inter-generational legacy of residential schools.”

Since 2012, the Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women has advocated for an inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women. Qulliit commended the TRC June 9 for drawing a link between the social ills that grew from Canada’s residential school system and the murders and disappearances of nearly 1,200 Indigenous women in Canada over the last 30 years.

The TRC report points to “an unquestionable and devastating link” between the large numbers of murdered and missing Indigenous women, Qulliit said in a June 9 release, and the many harmful background factors in their lives which include poverty, domestic violence and the over-representation of Indigenous children in the child-welfare system.

“We echo the words of Chief Justice Murray Sinclair when we say that we wish to ‘link arms with’ the families of the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls and once again call on the government of Canada to take this issue seriously and hold an inquiry,” said Qulliit president Charlotte Borg.

“Reconciliation includes justice and healing for the Indigenous families who are today experiencing tragedy as a result of historic injustice.”

Borg said Qulliit will continue to add its voice to the call for an inquiry, because the organization believes that the legacy of residential schools must be examined, along with the failure of police forces, in solving those crimes against Indigenous women.

An RCMP study released in 2014 confirmed that Aboriginal women in Canada suffer much higher rates of violent crime than non-Aboriginals.

And although overall rates of missing and murdered women have declined in Canada since 1980, rates among Aboriginal women have changed little.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has repeatedly said the issue of missing or murdered Aboriginal women should not be viewed as a sociological phenomenon, but rather as a crime — one that police can deal with.

Inuit leaders have noted that Inuit women face different challenges than their indigenous counterparts in other parts of the country.

The RCMP identified 20 female victims of homicide in Nunavut between 1980 and 2012.

While some Inuit women can go missing in urban centres such as Winnipeg, Ottawa or Montreal, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Terry Audla noted last fall that most Inuit women who are victims of violence can’t even leave their own homes because they live in small, overcrowded communities where relatives have no space and there are no shelters to run to.

That’s prompted many Inuit leaders to call for better access to safe shelters in the North for women and their children.

Following the work of the TRC, Qulliit thanked the Indigenous men and women who spoke with “honesty, clarity and courage” to the commission.

“We applaud Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin for saying that the forced removal of children from their families and the often-horrific subsequent treatment they received during their time in residential schools constitutes ‘cultural genocide,’” Qulliit said in the release.