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The Current Transcript for April 4, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Bells ringing]

[Sound: Soft rain]

AMT: How long have you been coming to this flame?

BRIDGET TOLLEY: Well, I've been coming since 2006 because I was trying to find a way to bring my mother in there and the only way I can think of was starting by the outside. I said well, maybe if we can have a vigil outside, then I'll figure out how to bring her in there, you know?

AMT: I’m standing with Bridget Tolley in the intermittent rain in front of the parliament buildings at the Centennial Flame—a place where she comes every October to ask questions and to honour her mother.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: Just let me show you here.

AMT: She's got a red cloth bag over her shoulder protecting a stack of papers two inches thick.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: Do you see how much pages is in here? This is the report for my mother.

AMT: Gladys Tolley died on the highway running through her reserve 16 years ago.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: My mother was broken to pieces. I have the reports. It’s in the reports.

AMT: And what happened to her?

BRIDGET TOLLEY: She was crossing the road one night. She was at my sister's house. They were having a few drinks and she was on her way home and she got hit by the Sûreté du Québec police car.

AMT: It could well have been an accident. But Bridget says things in the report just don't add up.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: If this report was done right, I could have accepted it, you know? But it's blaming my mother for everything and not blaming the cop at all for any of what happened. The case was closed in February of 2002 and the coroner's report was just finished in June of that year. So the coroner's report wasn't even in the police case when they closed it. And not only that, the coroner never seen the body.

AMT: What would it take for you to be able to feel that you can move forward?

BRIDGET TOLLEY: By reopening and re-examining the case and looking at all the wrongs. You know I'm not here for money or anything. I just want the justice, dignity and respect that my mother deserves. You know my mother is not a drunken Indian woman. She's a very beautiful, warm-hearted, loving woman. It hurts. It's been hurting for 15 years and I don't know what else to do. You know?

AMT: Like so many others, Bridget was pleased when the government announced an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. But all these months in, she's losing faith.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: Because families don't know anything about what's happening with it. I don't know anything what's happening with the inquiry.

AMT: Her expectations are very clear.

BRIDGET TOLLEY: We want justice. We want to find our missing. We want to solve our unsolved. It's hard to move forward if we don't fix the wrongs of the past to move forward to the future.

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'No quick fixes' to speed up MMIWG inquiry, says lawyer

Guests: Christa Big Canoe, Pam Palmater

AMT: There are great expectations when it comes to the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and that is why we are here in the nation's capital. Hello, everyone.

[Music: Theme]

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Welcome to the fifth in a series of public forums we have been holding across the country on this issue. A conversation on The Current that flows out of the viewing of our virtual reality documentary, Highway of Tears—the stretch of northern BC highway that has become emblematic of the vulnerabilities faced by Indigenous women and girls. If you want to see it, learn how on our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. We are in Gatineau, Quebec in the iconic spaces of the Canadian Museum of History designed by a ground-breaking Indigenous architect, Douglas Cardinal. Intricate totem poles carved by Pacific Coast Indigenous artists tower above us in this space. You can see Parliament Hill from here right across the river. So what better place to be to ask about leadership and progress and the work of the commission that was created to hold the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women? In about half an hour, we will hear from the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett. We will hear from Senator Murray Sinclair who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In our last half hour, we opened the floor to those of you in our audience. There are families among us grieving for their loved ones, still asking for answers. We will hear from some of them as well. But we will begin inside the inquiry. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Thank you for being with us and if you are tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. Before we begin, I would like to start with a welcome from Algonquin elder Claudette Commanda.

CLAUDETTE COMMANDA: [Speaking in alternate language] Welcome to each and every one of you, brothers and sisters, to the unsurrendered unseeded territory of the Algonquin people. So on behalf of our nation, the Algonquin people, we welcome each and every one of you. And as we sit here together, I ask that we acknowledge and that we remember the women and remember the families. Kitch Miigwetch. Thank you very much.

AMT: Thank you very, very much.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Shortly after taking power, the Liberal government followed through on an election promise to begin an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Last August, three ministers of the Crown stood in this exact place to launch that inquiry. But seven months later, many concerns have been raised about the inquiry from its terms of reference to the pace of its work and the way it is communicating with family members. Christa Big Canoe is a lawyer with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and she is with us now. Welcome.

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Thank you.

AMT: Can you give us a window into what is going on behind the scenes? What has the inquiry accomplished so far?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Certainly. Well, the inquiry has since September, the five commissioners, have been working as the chief commissioner has said from ground zero, so essentially building the capacity and the network and the staff in order to be able to ensure that the hearings and the proceedings can all happen in a good way.

AMT: Now hearings, the actual hearings with families are set to begin at the very end of May. Am I correct?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Yes, you are.

AMT: May 29^th, that week?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Yes.

AMT: What should the public and the families expect to see?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Before the hearings, what happens is there is advisory circles. So members of the commission itself, the commissioners along with health and community relations, the legal team, they go and meet with community members, with families and survivors and there is you know town halls beginning in April. That's the first opportunity to give a lot of information on the ground at a local place. When the hearings come, there's going to be three parts. The first part is the family information gathering hearings that start in May. Essentially what will happen there is very public hearings but there will be a number of options for participants. So people that are witnesses, the families that will be testifying to the commissioners will have options in an open public hearing, in camera or an ability to give statements to statement takers so they don't have to be in the public forum if they don't want to be.

AMT: Why is it taking so long to get to that point?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: You know I think that the commissioners and all of the team members at the inquiry are well aware of the frustration that does exist. It does seem like a long time. It's been seven months since the commissioners were given the mandate. But it's a lot of work and there's been a lot of dedication putting in place the pieces that are necessary to ensure that an actual legal process is going to happen in a way that creates a good public record, that's important for families and any of the stakeholders such as institutions. And so there's no quick fixes to get to making sure that everybody can participate and that Canadians are listening and the public is aware. It needs to roll out in a way that there is enough information and we're aware of the criticism and acknowledge the criticism of the slowness of communications. It’s something that the national inquiry is really striving and working on now. You’ll have noticed more recently we've been putting out more releases and working harder.

AMT: During the pre-inquiry process, family members talked about wanting cases reopened, people like Bridget Tolley who you heard just now. They feel there's been a miscarriage of justice in their own individual cases. They want justice. Will the inquiry be able to deliver that?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: I think justice is obviously defined broadly and differently. Things that we know that a national or any public inquiry can't do is a finding of criminal or civil liability and that's because it's all based in law. So the terms of reference set out particular things, what the mandate can and can't do, but also there's legislation. So this is the first national inquiry this country's ever had. We've had royal commissions. We had the TRC which was a court-endorsed settlement agreement but we've never had a national inquiry where we had a federal jurisdiction and 13 other jurisdictions and each of those jurisdictions have law in relation to public inquiries act and so there has to be an awareness of some of the limitations. And so managing expectations and one of the things that we do want to make clear is that there's no way the commissioners will make finding of criminal or civil fault. But that doesn't preclude them from looking at systemic issues from actually looking at cases—not to reopen or reinvestigate them—but to actually review what the investigations have done so they can identify where they see patterns and problems.

AMT: There's another person on the stage with you. I'd like to bring her into this conversation now. Pam Palmater is a Mi'kmaq lawyer and chair in Indigenous governance at Ryerson University in Toronto. She's been an advocate on the issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls for over a decade, especially as it relates to police racism and sexualized violence. Welcome.

PAM PALMATER: Thank you.

AMT: What is your assessment of the work this inquiry has done so far?

PAM PALMATER: Well, I think I mean first of all, the federal government deserves credit for living up to their promise. You know there is an inquiry and that's important. We've advocated for that for a very long time. And both the commissioners and the lawyers and the people that are working for the inquiry inherited this, whatever this is. So the fact that the terms of reference weren't jointly drafted between family members and activists and the federal government is a problem. That's why this inquiry is now faced with having to do the very best it can with very, very circumscribed process, time limits and budget. You're talking about a nationwide process—not unlike the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—that could involve 4,000 murdered and missing Indigenous women or even more. So we're talking about triple the amount of work that has been done by Indigenous women organizations and activists over the last 30 years and we're going to try to compress it in less than two years with a budget that's less than half of the TRC. So they're put in a very difficult position. That being said though, I think there's a huge expectation that even though the terms of reference failed to give many of the families what they wanted and even though we've got this really problematic situation is that we're now looking to push them to do whatever it is they can to take it where it needs to go. And you know there is this limitation that you can't look at criminal and civil liability. Okay, but you can look at the extent at which police engage in sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls and how big of a problem that is in the crisis. You can look at the extent to which the extractive industry and man camps and mining and extraction has increased violence against Indigenous women in the numbers that go murdered and missing. You can do that. They can do that if they make the choice to do that. But unfortunately with these processes, these things don't happen without a push from the outside. And I think that's probably some of what the inquiry is feeling but they're also probably sitting there saying yeah, yeah, please push us in this direction because they have very limited terms.

AMT: And Christa Big Canoe, that raises another point. We can talk about individual family members coming to see you but you are going to need to hear from corporations and institutions, are you not?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Absolutely. So I had to explain. The first part would be the family information gathering but there's two other parts to the hearings. The second part will focus on governments, organizations, opportunity for institutions to actually testify before the inquiry. And the third part is expert panels and that's going to take place over the first two parts. So it's not going to be staged one, two, three, rather it'll be the first part, the second part and throughout that there'll be a reliance on experts to provide evidence and expertise very broadly speaking, not just you know academic or limited to but like actual professional expertise.

AMT: You say should they want to but you actually have the power to call people. You have the power of subpoena, do you not?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Yes, we do.

AMT: So you can get police institutions. You can get some institutions to actually testify?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: They’re called coercive powers. So the legislation allows the commissioners and the commissioners have the authority to actually compel testimony, witnesses, documents. So the short answer to that is yes.

AMT: The last time you were on The Current to talk about the inquiry, you were worried about how effective it would be. You didn't have the job you have now. Why did you decide to work with the inquiry?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: That's a really good question. Obviously it was a tough one that I had to speak to my family with because I was working in a place that had a great legal team and I love the work I was doing in Aboriginal legal services. But it would be completely disingenuous if for the last 20 years of my life, I’ve been screaming look how many Indigenous women, girls, two-spirited people in this country are missing. I've been doing that for many, many years on a grassroots level and on a national level and it’d be very disingenuous when the opportunity came up for me to turn my head away and say well no, I can't help you out. Like we need to build solutions and the way we do that is we tap into the resources that we have and quite frankly, I've been fortunate enough in my legal experience to work with so many strong and resilient families that have lost a lot. And they've taught me so much, way more than I could ever learn in law about how we can try to do better. And so when this opportunity came up, I felt compelled—not just professionally but personally—because I have children and because I have nieces and nephews and because I want the world and all Canadians to actually be alive to this issue. I really felt compelled.

AMT: Pam Palmater, what lessons can this team learn from inquiries in the past? I'm thinking of the Pickton inquiry. I'm thinking of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What do you want them to be aware of?

PAM PALMATER: Well, I mean first of all to presume ahead of time that the government will not act on the recommendations. That they're going to have to write a report and do an analysis that's for a much bigger picture. This cannot simply be here you go, federal government, here's what we want to do, because there's a really high likelihood that they won't. And that's across all governments, all reports of all times. That being said, there are other processes that we use to inform the public. We could do something about the lack of police accountability for example. There's things that we can bring out. We can shine a light on all these really dark places that haven't had the light shone on it to actually take action and set other initiatives in motion. So if this inquiry can't look review cases, well then wherever this inquiry falls down because of this limited terms of reference, then it's going to be up to the government to stand up and fill in those gaps. This is not the solution. The inquiry itself is not the solution. It's the action that's going to come out afterwards and that, we only got the inquiry because of the action of Indigenous women activists and families on the ground for decades and we will only get at the solutions in the future not by waiting for the government to do it but by pushing and pushing and pushing.

AMT: Pam Palmater, in a perfect world, what would you like to see come out of this inquiry?

PAM PALMATER: I would like to see them do everything humanly possible to make this inquiry go where it needs to go and look at what it needs to look at. They can use a human rights framework in terms of how they write the report, how they do their investigations so that the focus is on where is Canada falling down on breaching human rights or failing to protect human rights if it becomes a sociological overview about all of the history and the things covered in the TRC and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples. We know what the social ills are. We know what the root causes of those things are. What we don't know are really awful things like to what extent there is foster care for little Indigenous girls a pipeline into sexual exploitation, into human trafficking. To what extent has the all of the police forces in Canada been involved in the exploitation of Indigenous women? We know this country was founded on it. We know the Northwest police would withhold rations to exploit sex from little Indigenous girls. So if the country is founded on it and we have this problem now with police sexualized abuse, how can they go beyond the terms of reference which say oh, you can't look at individual police misconduct and look at the larger picture?

AMT: Christa Big Canoe, you have with this inquiry just over a year and a half to wrap up this work. Can you do enough in that time? Is that enough time to accomplish enough meaningful results?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: I believe that it is. I know that the commission is currently intending to work within the timelines that have been provided by the federal, provincial and territorial governments. You know I think we could be doing this for years and years. The reality is. And so when you look at the mandate can we do good work in the time we have, absolutely. Can we produce good recommendations? Absolutely. And it has to go beyond just sort of sociological phenomenon. We already know root causes but we need the evidence base in order to make the recommendations and sort of action things. And you know the national inquiry, yes, I work for them and I'm a team member. But it’s one thing and one solution to this much bigger issue. There's many opportunities in this time frame to raise awareness, to get Canadians to understand this issue so that opinion of public matters too. And you know the public opinion is important in actually affecting change. Part of it's educational, part of it's healing. There's so many components and could work be done? I believe so because there are so many people that are committed and dedicated to taking the terms they've been given to do as much as possible with them.

AMT: Okay. Well, we’ll leave it there but we'll be talking to both of you again as this continues forward. Thank you both.

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Thank you.

AMT: That is Christa Big Canoe, a lawyer with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Pam Palmater is chair of Indigenous governance at Ryerson University. A reminder if you are tweeting about this public forum to use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. If you want to watch our virtual reality documentary, Highway of Tears, go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Go to our Facebook page on our website to see photos from this public forum. Coming up I'll be speaking to Carolyn Bennett, the minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs about the work of the national inquiry. We'll speak to Senator Murray Sinclair about how this inquiry might learn from the work he did leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And we have a lot of people here at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec right across the river from Parliament Hill. In our last half hour, we will be hearing from our audience. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One.

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'No one wants this report to be put on a shelf': Indigenous Affairs Minister responds to inquiry criticism

Guests: Carolyn Bennett, Murray Sinclair

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in the grand hall at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec and this is a special edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is the fifth in our series of public forums on missing and murdered indigenous women. We are examining the work of the national inquiry and asking about leadership and how this issue is linked to Canada's reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. If you're tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. Still to come, some thoughts from Senator Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we'll be taking questions from our audience here with us at the Museum of History across the river from Parliament Hill. But first, the Minister responsible.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's not just an Indigenous issue but it's everybody's issue.

VOICE 2: There was something about the death of Tina Fontaine that galvanized you though. What was it?

VOICE 3: Well, it was the disrespect to her person. It was the last straw for me, my family and my community.

VOICE 4: I was wondering why my Dad would have a hard time hugging me. It’s because of what happened to him.

VOICE 5: How much of this, this burden of responsibility of educating, of talking about it do our people have to bear before Canadians are going to get it? Before things are actually going to change?

VOICE 6: When they did release her picture, it was her mug shot. So you can imagine the responses we got.

VOICE 7: It may be the only opportunity that families have to have their loved one who's missing or murdered as a part of the official Canadian record.

AMT: Those are some of the voices from our series of missing and murdered Indigenous women public forums held across the country since last fall. At the forums we have heard from family members of missing and murdered still searching for answers, from police who have faced criticism about how these cases are investigated, from journalists and artists trying to shine a light on the issue, and from Indigenous youth who were born into this ongoing story. Many of the people we have spoken with want to see change. They want answers and they want accountability and they want the government to act now to protect Indigenous women and girls. I'm joined onstage now by Carolyn Bennett, Canada's minister of Indigenous and northern affairs. Her government launched the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls shortly after coming to power in 2015. Hello, Minister Bennett. Welcome.

CAROLYN BENNETT: It's good to be here.

AMT: What do you expect to come from this inquiry?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think that firstly it's amazing to be here on Algonquin territory and back in this beautiful space where we did launch the inquiry and where we were reminded that it has to be the spirits of the women that have left us that had to guide our work. A decade or more ago when we first met with the families, they wanted three things. They wanted justice, they wanted support for the families and they wanted things put in place to prevent it happening to any other family. And so I think that that hasn't changed but also what hasn't changed is that we have to do things right now and can't wait for the commission to do the things that the families have told us about already. And so whether that the changes to the child welfare system, housing, violence against Indigenous women, sexism and racism in policing and in all the other systems, we want to do what the families have been telling us they need to have done and it means that we can't wait for the end of the commission to do that.

AMT: Well, you make a good point because we already know a lot about why Indigenous women and girls are more vulnerable. And so if we look at those vulnerabilities now that you want to look at, we still see great disparity. We see dozens of communities on boil water advisories, real disparities in spending on education for Indigenous children. What is your department concentrating in the now?

CAROLYN BENNETT: So obviously there's the budget and then there's the way we go about things. The investments have to be there and so last year's budget and this year's budget put well over $10 billion into the project. But we know we can't do it in a patriarchal “father knows best” kind of way. This has to be co-developed in terms of the solutions with First Nations, Inuit and Metis people. And so it is the relationship as well and the reconciliation that is going to determine the way we will actually get the solutions that families and communities know are there and that we have to help them do what they know needs to be done.

AMT: Well, you announced the inquiry in 2015. You named the commission in August of 2016. The first three months of 2017 are gone. In exactly seven months, the first report—I know it's interim—but it's due in November. Family members are still waiting to find out how to participate. There have been no hearings. Can this timeline work?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I have every confidence that this amazing group of commissioners now have the tools. They have the resources. They're hiring great people. And their commitment to actually get this done because as Christa said, families know that they don't want this to go on for years and years and years. They've been waiting a long time for it. What we found in the pre-inquiries is as soon as the dates of the gatherings were named, that the networks went in to action and were able to make sure that the people who wanted to be able to participate where there at the gatherings. So I have every confidence that this trauma-informed approach that's made sure that the people who choose to participate in these gatherings will be well looked after and will again not be re-traumatized. And that was very, very important, I think, as the commissioners came together.

AMT: Are you expecting though to extend this deadline at some point?

CAROLYN BENNETT: I am pleased to hear from the commission that they’re intent on meeting the timelines in the budget. And again, we have a commitment with all the provinces and territories as well. This is historic to actually have all of the provinces and territories sign on to the terms of reference and to the commission that they too want this done in a timely fashion so they can get on and fix these things. I mean it's unheard of that a commission like this or an inquiry like this is able to actually go into things that are traditionally provincial and territorial like child welfare, like policing. And so this is a partnership and as was said, this isn't an Indigenous issue, a women's issue. This is a Canadian issue and I think it's also been important that the commission is organizing to keep Canadians with them as they go so that they can hear and they can be part of the healing as well.

AMT: You mentioned policing. Why isn't there a direct mandate to address the role of police?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, the very best advice we had was that we shouldn't be listing individual sectors. The commission is totally independent and has the ability to actually engage all of the issues that they see fit including policing.

AMT: And yet most people will tell you that at every level they have to engage with police. So police would actually intersect all those other sectors.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Yeah. And the commission as you heard will be totally able to deal with policing. Absolutely. This is really, really important and we certainly learnt that from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Once you know the truth, you can't unknow the truth and you have to get on and deal with it.

AMT: And I know this is an arm's length inquiry but around that cabinet table, will you and your colleagues make sure that the institutions for which you bear responsibility, understand that you expect cooperation?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Absolutely and that was very much part of the conversations we had with every province and territory around their institution as well. So it will be all of the federal institutions as well as the provincial and territorial ones that cooperation is going to be imperative to the commission or the inquiry being able to do a proper piece of work.

AMT: I want to ask about the nitty-gritty of the bureaucracy. During the pre-inquiry phase, you heard from more than 2,000 survivors, family members, frontline workers and yet the commission only has 150 names at this point. What happened?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, we have handed over everything we had. There's no question that some of the people came and wanted to testify anonymously. But we're working with the commission, our officials to make sure that they are able to reach out to the people that gave their names and were prepared to be reached out to. But as you’ve heard, it's the family networks on the ground. It's those really important community organizations that are the ones that are going to get the word out. This is a very local approach that requires that kind of sensitivity and I have every confidence that people who want to be heard and will know about it and will be heard.

AMT: And yet the commission says your department is not sharing the contact information of those who participated in that pre-inquiry.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Everything was handed over and they are they are working well together to make sure that they are able to use the information that was given to them.

AMT: You heard Pam Palmater in our last half hour. She said that this inquiry should presume the government will not act on any recommendations. How do you respond to that?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I hope that the Canadians understand that when we took on the 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and have really done I think important work already including calling the inquiry which was one of the calls to action. And I understand where the cynicism comes from but it is that no one wants this report to be put on a shelf and including the prime minister. So this is a serious undertaking. We really feel that it's going to be so important. And by having Canadians with us, I think that Kim Stanton’s research on commission says if you keep Canadians with you as you do an inquiry or a commission, they will make sure that the report doesn't stay on a shelf because they will have been part and bear witness to this really terrible chapter in Canada's history.

AMT: You do make the point that you care about these issues but you know the clock is ticking. What keeps you up at night when you think about what this inquiry still has to accomplish?

CAROLYN BENNETT: I think it's the healing. I think obviously part of the healing is for these families to know that it won't happen to another family. But I think that still in our country even with the investments in this year’s budget, that coast to coast to coast families and communities are hurting and that we have to do a better job. The hurt is just so palpable wherever you go. But also I think that there are such amazingly inspiring youth and emerging professionals and experts that I don't feel that I have to do this on my own. Everybody is coming forward to say how do we help? How do we make this right? And it is just inspiring to have the kind of support that is there for the families and the communities for this big project of reconciliation.

AMT: Before I let you go Minister Bennett, we talk about the families and the healing. Across from Parliament Hill is the Langevin Block named after Hector Langevin, one of the architects of the residential schools. As the Minister of Indigenous affairs, are you going to rename that building real soon?

CAROLYN BENNETT: I will certainly take that issue to my colleagues. I have to say it makes me pretty uncomfortable too.

AMT: Thank you for joining us, Carolyn Bennett. Carolyn Bennett is the minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. Senator Murray Sinclair is perhaps the person best placed to give advice to the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. He is the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which called for this inquiry to be launched. He knows a thing or two about how to make a national commission succeed. Senator Sinclair, welcome.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Thank you very much for asking me to be here.

AMT: What do you think about the concerns we have been hearing about the timing and the progress and the pace of this inquiry?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: I think they're legitimate. There's no question about that. Given the amount of time that this issue has been under public discussion, the families particularly and I think the general public as well, expected things to move more quickly. And though I'm sure the staff and the people at the inquiry have done all that they can, that concern now has to be addressed by the inquiry. They have to take responsibility for it and acknowledge it and move on. But at the same time they now have to recognize the impact that it's going to have upon their own timeline.

AMT: Do you expect to see them asking for an extension?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: I actually don't know. The history of inquiries in Canada has generally been that many inquiries run into roadblocks along the way and end up being delayed. That was the case with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we had to persuade the parties to the residential school settlement agreement that we couldn't complete the work of the inquiry because of the number of times that we'd had to go to court in order to get the documents out of the hands of the government which we needed in order to be able to write the report. So that was an unanticipated objection that we had to deal with. And I think each inquiry that has had to ask for an extension has had to have a reason and has had a reason to seek it. And at this point in time, if everybody cooperates, they should be able to get a certain degree of work done.

AMT: You spoke to the commissioners of the inquiry earlier in the mandate. What did you tell them?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, they asked to consult with me and I agreed to do it because they wanted to learn about how we did our work at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and how we started out and the kinds of things that we ran into that they should anticipate or the things that they should do in order to move things along. And one of my first pieces of advice to them was that they should sit down and set out for themselves those questions that they feel the inquiry will have to answer at the end of its mandate. We did that at the TRC and we ended up with about 110 questions that we knew our report would have to answer. And I said to them the first two questions that they need to recognize this inquiry is going to have to answer are: who are the missing and murdered women and what happened to them and secondly what have we learned from this and what can we do to make sure it never happens again?

AMT: It was your commission that asked, recommended this inquiry.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Yes.

AMT: And so is the mandate that exists now for this inquiry, is that what you wanted? Is that what you envisioned?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: We didn't try to micromanage the mandate. What we said in our report was that the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is an ongoing painful issue for the Indigenous community that needs resolution in order for us to be able to move forward with a better relationship in this country. Those families that have lost women to violence over the course of the many years that this has been before us need to have some answer because they will be unwilling to engage in dialogues around reconciliation until that issue is addressed because no one should ever lose a child. No parent should ever lose a daughter. And these families are hurting and because they're hurting, other people around them are going to be hurting. And the Canadian public, I think, should feel that they're hurting as well. People in Canada who understand the importance of not losing a child to violence should be front and centre with the people who have lost the children—in these cases, the daughters, the mothers, the nieces—should be standing up with them and saying we need to know what happened and we need to make sure this never happens again.

AMT: How concerned should this inquiry be that some of the family members of the missing and murdered might be losing faith in the process?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, I think you always have a concern about that. We did at the TRC. People I think might have forgotten that when we took over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2009, the commission had a stumbling start at the beginning with other commissioners who had resigned from that position. And so we were faced with the anger and disappointment of many survivors who had lost faith in the Truth and Reconciliation process. And so we had to spend time to recover that trust and to address that anger and to engage with the people who were disappointed. And we never shied away from doing that and I think that the commissioners should not shy away from those who are expressing those feelings to them today.

AMT: In the course of the hearings of the TRC, you heard so many individual stories. What's the power of that?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, it’s an amazing educational experience for the commissioners to begin with. It can be a difficult experience for the commissioners so we gave them advice, I gave them advice about how to take care of themselves as they're doing it, as we had to, as commissioners of the TRC. But I also said that you have to be sure to take care of your staff and your families because they will feel whatever pain you are feeling. But in addition to that, the Canadian public is going to experience the stories in a way that they may never have heard them before. The Canadian public will have their assumptions addressed and some people may in fact find out that their views of Indigenous people, their views of Indigenous women have been tainted and elements of racism have merged into their views unintentionally because of what public officials have told them. So the very issue for example that so many of the women who have been victimized by violence in the past have been relegated to members of the sex trade or people involved in the drug trade has automatically tainted people in terms of thinking about them as victims without being fair to the fact that they never asked for that. They did not participate in their own violence and in their own death.

AMT: I just want to get your sense then of how you see reconciliation moving forward at this point since the work you have done. You were appointed to the Senate by Justin Trudeau. Do you think his government is moving fast enough when it comes to addressing reconciliation?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: I've said many times no and it’s through no fault of any individual. I think we recognized at the beginning that government was a huge immovable object that required a great deal of energy in order to turn it in a particular direction. The inertia that exists is not necessarily inertia at the leadership level. We have seen the leaders of government enunciate those words that need to be said. I think what we need now to see our directives coming from those leaders on down through the system requiring people to perform their duties in accordance with that direction. People's management skills should be measured against whether they meet that objective. Their bonuses should be withheld if they haven't met those objectives. Their job performance should be assessed on whether they are doing what they have been told to do or not. And we haven't seen those kinds of things. In addition to that, I think that the government itself has yet to announce publicly their strategy and their overall plan to achieve reconciliation and even to implement the calls to action of the TRC and how they're going to do it. I have seen a document in which the government has enunciated those calls to action which they feel they are addressing. But I don't see an overall plan to move this country to a point where all people have respect for each other but in particular to assist Indigenous people at the outset to gain back their self-respect which the government spent 150 years destroying.

AMT: You are now in the very hallways of the people who have to do that. Do they duck when they see you coming? Are you like on their case on this?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Yeah but apparently not hard enough. There are still some people resisting, not just in the Senate but elsewhere. And it's because people tend to forget that there have always been those who are deniers of history and they deny history for their own reasons. They deny perhaps because they are slow-minded and dim-witted, but more importantly I think it's because they believe in a certain delusion about our history that they are unwilling to give up. And because of that, the process in which we have to engage with those people is to try to show them how they are wrong. And I've always been convinced that while we may not deal with all of the deniers, we can at least take away their tools and that is if we manage to preserve their record of this experience in Canada, particularly the residential school experience and now the experience of the missing and murdered women. If we can preserve that record for future generations, then these deniers will have a diminishing population of people who will believe them. And that's my view and that's what I intend to work for.

[Sound: Crowd cheering and applause]

AMT: Murray Sinclair, thank you for your work and for your insights. Thank you so much.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Thank you.

AMT: Murray Sinclair, senator and former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

[Sound: Crowd cheering and applause]

AMT: Coming up next, we will be taking questions from our audience. A reminder if you're tweeting about this public forum, use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. If you want to watch our virtual reality documentary, The Highway of Tears, go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. On our website you can also see photos from this public forum and check out our Facebook page for more information about our project. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One from the Museum of History's grand hall in Gatineau, Quebec.

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How Senator Murray Sinclair responds to why don't residential school survivors just 'get over it'

Guests: Murray Sinclair, Waneek Horn-Miller, Christa Big Canoe, Pam Palmater

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current coming to you from the grand hall at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec just across the river from Parliament Hill.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is the fifth in our series of public forums that we are recording across the country about missing and murdered Indigenous women. And we have been talking about the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. A reminder if you are tweeting about the program, use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. You can head to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, to learn more about our guests and our virtual reality documentary on the Highway of Tears. In this half hour we want to hear from our audience. We have a receptive group of people here at the Museum of History and we want to hear what you think of the discussion today. I want to mention actually as we sit in this amazing hall designed by the architect Douglas Cardinal, that years ago I did an interview with Douglas Cardinal about his work and he told me that when he went to architectural school, they told him that he didn't have the right background to be there. And it's worth noting that now as we sit in this very iconic building done by a ground-breaking architect who is an Indigenous architect that he faced hurdles to do the work that we now enjoy today. If you want to say something, please look for our CBC colleagues who are in the audience with their microphones. CBC reporters Connie Walker and Waubgeshig Rice are holding the microphones. But first I want to go to Waneek Horn-Miller. She is a Mohawk of Kahnawake and she's a former Olympian. In February she began working with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. She is the inquiry's director of community relations. Hello.

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Hi.

AMT: We've heard a lot over the course of this show and in the news in the last little while about a lack of communication with family members. What do you make of the concerns that keep surfacing on this issue?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Well, I think they're extremely valid and that is something that we are really trying to tackle right now. We just hired a brand new director of communications. She'll be coming on soon. So this is something that's really, really important to us and we're hearing it loud and clear for many family members and survivors and the national Indigenous organizations. I mean they're all telling us the same thing and this is something that we really have to step up our game in.

AMT: So what are you doing to make sure that—I mean there's talking to the media of course—but also how do you reach all the different communities? How do you get the word out of where you’re going to be, when you're coming, what you need to know, how they can sign up? How do you do that?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Well, this is something that you know in realizing just where Indigenous people are living. I mean you have the Inuit in the north and we've been hearing from [unintelligible] when we met with them that some of those communities can only be contacted through CB radio. So what's really important for us is these advisory meetings that we're having because it's those families, it’s those organizations in the regions that are going to tell us this is how you need to communicate with the potential witnesses and participants of the inquiry. So we are rolling out communications programs. We are also rolling out a social media program. We're working on that. So right now if you want to participate, whether you participated in the pre-inquiry or not, you have to sign up through the profile at MMIWG-ffada.ca or you call our 1-800 number. Now the reason why we're not cold calling people is because that's a lot like subpoenaing. Like that's a lot like a judge saying you have to come.

AMT: It’s too intimidating.

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: It's intimidating. We want to give people choice and it's the difference of our history as Indigenous people in this country. We've had a lot of things done to us. We want to do this with people. So that’s the option.

AMT: Fair enough. But you know today we got a list of places where you're going: Whitehorse, Edmonton, Thunder Bay, Halifax, Winnipeg, northern BC, Saskatoon, Montreal between the beginning of April and early May. But those look like meetings about meetings. When do you get into the nitty-gritty?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Well, our first hearing is taking place at the end of May in Whitehorse.

AMT: That's two whole months away from now.

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Yes, it is. That is two whole months and in the meantime we have to have these advisory meetings. We cannot go forward without them. We cannot go forward. It's in our terms of reference that we have to go and be advised by not just the families of MMIWG but the LGBT community, the Inuit community. We have to get out there and talk to the youth like these are advisory groups that we need to hear how best we need to support them. Because that's important, that trauma informed is a term that you can't just throw around because we are asking people to share some of the hardest stories, the hardest information they're ever going to share in their lives. And we have to be cautious with that and cautious about how we support them.

AMT: But at the same time, you have a lot of people who are very interested in sharing their stories. They want it on the record, right?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: Absolutely.

AMT: So you want that out there.

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: It would be very irresponsible for us to just plow ahead and not have these supports for pre, during and post hearings. So that we do no further harm and that's coming right from the commissioners on down to all of us.

AMT: Okay. This is important to you on many levels, is it not?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: You know I'm a sister. I'm a daughter. I'm an aunt. I have two daughters. I have lots of nieces. And unfortunately I don't know many Indigenous women that haven't been affected or the victim of violence or sexual violence. So when I was asked to be part of this, I remember looking at my daughter. And she's six. And I looked at her play and this lightness and this beauty she had and I thought I never want her to grow up to understand that as an Indigenous woman, she can expect less than being 100 per cent safe in this country.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Waneek Horn-Miller, director of community relations with the national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. And as she says, they are going to make sure that people know what they're up to. Waub, have you got someone? Have you got a question? Okay. We have Matilda in our front row. If you watched our documentary you will recognize Matilda Wilson and she has a question. Hello, Matilda.

MATILDA WILSON: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. I am from Smithers, BC and my daughter Brenda Wilson is here with me and I am also a survivor of the residential school. What I want to say is this really hurt me a lot. It was just like a slap in the face for what I heard from Lynn Beyak. “Why don't you get over it?” Why? Why we can't get over it? Because there was no healing. There was no treatments, no help for the residential survivors. And also the residential survivors’ children are very well affected by this too. I am one of 14 children and my father and my mother looked after us dearly with love, respect. And that's what I remember since I was a little girl. But since the 1900s, these residential schools were being built so they could change the Aboriginal people, as they say to get them away from savageness. And the residential school I went to was built in 1922. So you can imagine how many have gone through in and out of that residential school. As for myself, I went there in 1956. I was six years old and my brother, he was five years old. And my other sisters were there too.

AMT: Matilda, can I ask you then: what do you want to see come of this inquiry? You had your own experience in the residential schools obviously and then you lost your daughter, Ramona. What do you expect this inquiry to do?

MATILDA WILSON: You know I’ve racked my brain to say what is the best way to help all the survivors and the residential survivors’ children. And in BC, there's so many broken homes and there's so many children taken away. It all stems from the residential school. They should, if they can, help out the families that are fighting alcohol and bring their children with them so they don't have to lose their children. It would help so much for the families to heal together. The reason I say that is because when I was six years old and my brother was five, we still crawled in our mom and dad's bed. And that really did something to us when they took us away to boarding school and were never to see them for seven years. [Crying] I want to let you know it still hurts a lot and I want this person, Lynn Beyak, please stand in my shoes.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Senator Sinclair, I want to ask you if you have any thoughts you'd like to share about the comments of your fellow senator, Lynn Beyak.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: I spent all day telling people no comment but to those of you who are here, I'll say this. Many people have said over the years that I've been involved in the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: why can't we just get over it and move on? And my answer has always been why can't you always remember this because this is about memorializing those people who have been victims of a great wrong? Why don't you tell the United States to get over 9/11? Why don’t you tell this country to get over all of the veterans who died in the Second World War instead of honouring them once a year? Why don't you tell your families to stop thinking about all of your ancestors who died? Why don't you turn down and burn down all of those headstones that you put up for all of your friends and relatives over the years? It's because it's important for us to remember. We learn from it. And until people show that they have learned from this, we will never forget and we should never forget even once they have learned from it, because this is a part of who we are. It's not just a part of who we are as survivors and children of survivors and relatives of survivors, but as part of who we are as a nation and this nation must never forget what it once did to its most vulnerable people.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: We’re going to go over here. Please give us your name.

MARGARET: [Speaking in alternate language] My name is Margaret. I am a victim of so much crime that at times it's hard to keep walking in a good way. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about the future. I'm an educator and I'm a step mother of a young woman who is also Indigenous. When I looked at the makeup of this commission, I was concerned because it has a legal focus, not a focus on a holistic way of knowing that comes from our traditions. Because our communities don't need to just look at what other people are doing. They don't just need to look at the justice system. We need to look inside. We need to look at [unintelligible], how we're connected and how we're supporting each other, how we can put an end to lateral violence, how we can put an end to racism and internalized racism so that our young women and our young girls and our boys grow up knowing their responsibilities to each other. So how is the inquiry going to have an educational component?

AMT: Christa Big Canoe, perhaps you can speak to that?

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: I think what you're saying is really important. It may appear from the outside or publicly as a legal focus but what the commissioners are looking at within a legal framework are a number of issues, not just legal issues, including education, child welfare, policing. It can't just take a singular approach.

AMT: Thank you. Connie Walker, you have a question from Facebook.

CONNIE WALKER: From Facebook Live, Natasha Tavares asks, “What is being done specifically about the abduction, grooming and trafficking of children, youth and young women? What trauma informed resources and money are available, if any, for Indigenous survivors on and off reserves and communities?” Pam, do you want to take this one?

PAM PALMATER: Well, I'm not certain what's being done on the part of the inquiry but I would say that those kinds of considerations are incredibly important. The last thing we want this inquiry to do even in error is replicate the same forces that are making Indigenous women and girls vulnerable. So we can come up with the best social media plan we want to, but not all Indigenous women and girls are on social media. A vast majority of women prisoners do not have access to social media. How are we going to access these women for example? What about the thousands of women who have no homes? They're homeless. If we require under a trauma-informed philosophy that they come to us, they will never come to us. We have to take bold steps while protecting people to make sure that everyone is included because the high-risk lifestyle of being born Indigenous and female has started since contact and it's never been resolved. It's not about all of the other sociological things people think. The highest risk factor for any human being in this country is being born Indigenous and female. So how do we get to that? And we'll only get to that by the people who are most vulnerable.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Okay, We’re going to go to another question over here. Go ahead.

PAT KELLY: Sure. My name is Pat Kelly and as a 17 year old, I had the idea of a big adventure of working for the department of Indian affairs in Moose Factory. I went there as a child care worker. And what I remember—what I feel right now is shame—but what I remember is the loneliness of my children in my care and the loneliness that I felt. I missed my family and they missed theirs. And that has informed my life. But it also shaped my life to see the incredible bond of family and community. And I know that that spirit, those traditions of Indigenous people can also help to inform the healing that has to happen. And when the inquiry is done, what can we do as a country to incorporate those values, that culture, the teachings of the seven grandfathers? How can that help us to heal as a country?

AMT: Murray Sinclair, do you want to speak to that?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: There has been a very significant movement by Indigenous youth particularly, but adults as well, to recover their identity through understanding their culture and their teachings. One of the ambitions that I think we should develop as a country is to do what we can to ensure that there are means available to those communities to provide that cultural understanding and those teachings to those young people so that when they grow up, they will be able to have a good sense of who they are and a good sense of how that can help them improve their community. Because if you are able to respect yourself, then you will know how to respect others. If you are able to be kind to yourself, you will know how to be kind to others. And if you are able to love yourself, you will know how to love others. And so that means that we as human beings have so much that we can offer to the rest of society by understanding what our teachings are and who we are as Indigenous people.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: I think we have time for just one more question. Go ahead.

JOLENE SAULIS DIONE: Hi. My name is Jolene Saulis Dione and I am a Maliseet Indigenous woman from Tobique First Nation and I am one of the women, the original women who worked on Sisters in Spirit way back when this was simply an issue. And one thing that you walk away with when meeting these families is that they have the answers. They know what needs to be done. And I keep hearing this word “trauma informed”, Trauma informed is a great thing but what's most important is actually the post- trauma growth. And every family member and every survivor that you meet is just that: resilience. Where does resilience play out in this entire process?

WANEEK HORN-MILLER: That's a very important piece of this. And we realize that there are many things going on across this country that are teaching resilience like [alternate language] Akwesasne and Kahnawake which the rites of passage is all these young people that are being taught how to be strong, Indigenous young people. And these are stories we are seeking as well not, not what has hurt us. We need to know that as well, we need to identify that but we also need to know what has made our communities strong. And I would like to hear those stories within each and every single person that comes and testifies.

AMT: I'm going to ask Pam to comment as well. We haven't heard from you for a bit.

PAM PALMATER: We're only here because of the resilience and strength and refusal to give up of Indigenous peoples but Indigenous women especially. Throughout time we have been targeted for scalping laws, forced sterilizations. They stole our children, the police were raping us and we refused to give up. We refused to give up and we're still here. This inquiry is here because of the resilience of Indigenous women and I think that's important because Indigenous women are the ones who have filled the gaps. Colonization has hurt us all and but it's also hurt our men. Men are languishing in jail. Our men are discriminated against. They’re subject to violence. They're going murdered and missing. So Indigenous women have also have to step up as warriors for everybody. And I think that is the most important aspect about this, that it is because of Indigenous women. Idle No More started because of Indigenous women. The most vulnerable, the most exploited stood on the frontlines knowing the risks involved and said our Earth is too precious not to save for our future generations and we will take that risk and move forward. So I think this inquiry has to be brave enough to meet the bravery of these warriors and be able to take risks to do what it takes to get this done.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: We are going to end on that note. Christa Big Canoe, Pam Palmater, Murray Sinclair, Waneek Horn-Miller, thank you. I would like to thank the people involved in putting this forum together. The forum was produced by Kristin Nelson, Josh Bloch and Kathleen Goldhar. Our digital producer is Ruby Buiza. We want to give a special thanks to the folks at CBC here in Ottawa including Waubgeshig Rice and for everyone else's help and to Connie Walker, Angela Sterritt and CBC's Indigenous unit for its guidance in producing these public forums. Serge Brunet is our technical producer. Our sound engineers are Gary Francis and Jean Sebastien Villeneuve. Our camera operators are Olivier Plante, Emilien Juteau, Michel Aspirot and François Pelletier. We're going to leave you today with a performance by Ottawa's own Amanda Rheaume. She's an Indigenous singer-songwriter. Her song "Red Dress" was written in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women. She was inspired by artist Jaime Black's REDress Project which installs red dresses in public spaces as a visual reminder of the women and girls who are no longer with us. And I should say: all of the proceeds from the sale of the song are being donated to the Native Women's Association of Canada. So we will leave you with Amanda Rheaume. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti coming to you from the Museum of History in Gatineau across from Ottawa. Thank you for being part of this special edition of The Current.

[Sound: Applause]

[Music: “Red Dress” – Amanda Rheaume]

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April 4, 2017 full episode transcript

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