Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women inquiry launches with hope and concern
CBC Radio | Posted: August 4, 2016 11:27 AM | Last Updated: August 4, 2016
The national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has officially begun, launched the morning of August 3, 2016. While this brings the victims and their families closer to justice and healing, as well as provides a path to prevent future violence, there remain concerns about the commission's mandate.
The commission is directed to make recommendations on concrete actions to remove the systemic causes of violence and increase the safety of Indigenous women and girls in Canada, and also to make recommendations about commemorating and honouring the memory of the missing and murdered women and girls. - Carolyn Bennett, minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett, who led the process of launching the inquiry and was present yesterday to pass matters over to the commissioners, calls this a historic moment. While some are worried about cases which can't be examined because they're active police investigations, Bennett says the victims' families are concerned about the cold cases they believe to be homicides, that were deemed suicides or accidents, which the inquiry will have the power to look into.
Pamela Palmater, chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, is one of the advocates who is apprehensive about the inquiry's terms, especially in contrast to what has been said both at the press conference and by Bennett. While it has been stated that all the provinces and territories have signed on to the inquiry, Palmater says their signatures are not part of the terms, nor were representatives in attendance at the conference.
Christa Big Canoe, the legal advocacy director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, also believes that the discrepancy between what's been said and what's written in the mandated document is cause for concern.
If it's important enough to say over and over again to families and to the public, it should be important enough to include, actually, in the terms of reference ... People aren't going to recall what was said on the day that it was launched, all they'll have to work with is the legal document that actually gives, through legislative powers, authority to the commissioners. - Christa Big Canoe, legal advocacy director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto
Both Palmater and Big Canoe also say there needs to be a "parallel process" in order to ensure the systemic problems of these cases are examined. "At their own press conference they were saying, 'Canada's institutions are infected with racism and misogyny,'" says Palmater, concerned that the inquiry's terms don't adequately address police accountability.
"Look at and interview witnesses about what happened — what did the police do, what did they [not] do, what's the evidence they didn't look at, how long did it take — so that you can look at not just individual problems, but the very systemic problems."
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Sujata Berry, Julian Uzielli, Acey Rowe, Marc Apollonio and Kristin Nelson.