Reflections on the MMIWG national inquiry
Qajaq Robinson, right, one of four commissioners in the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, addresses a crowded conference room of mostly women on Thursday, Oct. 3, at the 21st annual Inuit Studies Conference in Montreal. Robinson spoke about how the inquiry’s challenges included trying to fulfill a huge mandate without inflicting further harm on traumatized participants and their families. One way was to deny lawyers cross-examination of those who testified—an unprecedented move for official inquiries in Canada. “We pissed a lot of people off and said ‘No.’ But that was our prerogative,” she said. Joining her, from left, are inquiry grief support worker Looee Okalik, inquiry researcher Lisa Koperqualuk and inquiry lawyer Violet Ford-Roy. The Inuit Studies conference continues over the next four days. See stories later on Nunatsiaq.com. (Photo by Lisa Gregoire)
The MMIWG mandate called for the following:
1. Effective action to prevent and eliminate violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada; and
2. Concrete and effective action to remove systemic causes of violence and to increase the safety of Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
Unfortunately, the commission didn’t go there. Like the TRC commission, it paid no attention to the needs and hopes of children and youth. Why didn’t they talk to young people?
Both commissions missed the point that educated and skilled people in or preparing for employment seldom commit suicide, are seldom murder victims and they seldom disappear. And they seldom go to jail.
There’s no greater bigotry, and racist bigotry at that, than for those empowered to recommend or to make change to withhold they advantages they had in their own childhood and youth, and to do that on the basis of ethnicity.
Please explain the mechanisms by which certain people might “withhold the advantages they had in their own childhood and youth”?
These nebulous forces colliding in the sky are quite the spectacle.
I agree with Colin, across Canada so many sponsored groups
are accomplishing very little for their people, apart from
themselves of course. They ignore their agenda when it suits
them.
Denying lawyers to cross examine people ?
What if the Govt. of Canada refused to talk with the people ?
When I spoke to MMIWG reps in the Kivalliq they were very
evasive and somebody said ” We are not up here for that”.
So much for the great “Tea & Bannock” tour of Canada.
So much waste to accomplish nothing for native people, and
we will continue to be so as long as we let them.
Certain native people, as other races, are good at ripping us
off.
But of course there is also a lot of good as well
At the MMIWG meeting I was at, a person complained about
young Inuit women getting pregnant by white men and then
abandoned by them. Everybody clapped.
My cousin said, ” I have been married to a fine Celtic man
for almost 30 years. What about the Inuit men who get Inuit
women pregnant and get abandoned. ” Nobody clapped
A MMIWG rep said to her “You don’t understand ” but the
rep never explained why. Very evasive indeed !
Denying lawyers the right to cross-examine indigenous witnesses is not ‘unprecedented’ for a public inquiry. Berger did it in the 1970s.
Its unusual, but certainly not unprecedented.
Re Number 2, start with Grade 7 in Rankin Inlet barely equivalent to Grade 3 in Ottawa for an Inuit boy moving to the South. Then there’s teaching kids to read and write English only in Grade 4, using books for preschoolers.
Schools providing little or no carpentry, metalwork, music, sports or supervised homework, and all for some families trying to get by in monstrously overcrowded housing if they aren’t actually homeless.
This is just some of what MMIW and TRC could have advocated for from their multi-million dollar, self-serving time-wasting. OK?
“Grade 7 in Rankin Inlet barely equivalent to Grade 3 in Ottawa” – Did you just make that up? I think you did. That’s the problem with comments sections, it’s all hyperbole and bluster, and people actually believe it!
What a waste of $92 million dollars this inquiry was. We learned nothing new.