Purpose

The purpose of this briefing note is to display the Executive Summary of the Final Report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. for Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations.

Introduction

The Government of Canada currently recognizes five genocides: the Holocaust, the Holodomor genocide, the Armenian genocide in 1915, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. thousands of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date. Many Indigenous people have grown up normalized to violence, while Canadian society shows an appalling apathy to addressing the issue. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls finds that this amounts to genocide.

The truth gathering process of national inquiry
Beginning its work in September 2016, the federal government and the 13 provincial and territorial governments mandated the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

·      “Part 1” of the Truth-Gathering Process. In all case families and survivors were given the choice to make their testimony public or kept private.

·      Parts 2 and 3 of the Truth-Gathering Process involved Institutional Hearings and Expert and Knowledge Keeper Hearings. Institutional Hearings inquired into the systemic causes of institutionalized violence, as well as institutional responses to violence.

·      In Part 4 of the Truth-Gathering Process, 94 Parties with Standing presented their final closing submissions to the National Inquiry, which offered many of the recommendations included in the final Calls for Justice

Success

The National Inquiry acknowledges that one of its most important successes is how many people came forward to share their truths.. Having so many people break the silence has already created a momentum that is building person by person, community by community.

The National Inquiry believes that the restoration of the rights of Inuit, Métis, and First Nations women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people is a pressing priority. Respecting these rights is key to ensuring overall progress in addressing the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and to finding holistic solutions that help restore Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people to their power and place.

New Framework

·      Centring Relationships to End Violence : During the Truth-Gathering Process, family members insisted that to understand and honour those whose lives were violently cut short requires a careful accounting of all the relationships. “encounters” refers to powerful moments that occur within relationships that families and survivors showed to be significant. These encounters represent a time and space through which the vision, values, and principles that shape families, communities, and individual lives are created. We see these as transformational moments, too; in other words, these encounters can lead the way to harm or to healing, depending on the context

·      Indigenous Recognitions of Power and Place : Indigenous rights are most often relational and reciprocal. This means that they tell us what people should be able to expect from others. Indigenous rights are also rooted in certain underlying values or principles within Indigenous laws, mainly respect, reciprocity, and interconnectedness. Histories encourage us to consider how principles of respect, reciprocity and interconnectedness can help Inuit, First Nations and Métis women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people reclaim their power and place today.

·      Emphasizing Accountability through Human Rights Tools : always consistently.
Canada has also adopted international human rights principles into domestic law through the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977), the Canadian Constitution, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). Each province and territory also has its own human rights legislation. These instruments are, in large part, rooted in international human rights law declarations and conventions, as well as customary international law. These instruments can provide and have provided additional avenues for redress for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.

·      Colonization as Gendered Oppression: are an important part of examining the gendered history of colonization. Colonization refers to the processes by which Indigenous Peoples were dispossessed of their lands and resources, subjected to external control, and targeted for assimilation and, in some cases, extermination. Colonization has jeopardized Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people’s rights to culture, health, security, and justice in distinct, though related ways, when compared to the experiences of Indigenous men and boys. In addition, the distinct and intersectional experiences of women and girls in remote areas and urban centres, or from First Nations, Inuit, or Métis perspectives, are an important part of examining the gendered history of colonization.

·      For First Nations women, the Indian Act tied a woman’s Indian Status to her husband. Policing was also established to exert control over Indigenous Peoples, particularly First Nations and Métis women, by casting them women as “a menace” to society and stereotyping them as prostitutes. This made it easy for early police misconduct (includingrape and murder) to go relatively unpunished.

·      Between 1883 and 1996, the Indian residential school system enforced a patriarchal Christian dogma that devalued women, enforced homophobia and transphobia, and exposed them to abuse that made them easy targets for abuse from others. First Nations women were also subjected to forced sterilization, further poverty and marginalization, and were targeted by the Sixties Scoop and ongoing child welfare policies.

Conclusion:

Violence against Indigenous women and girls is a crisis centuries in the making. The process of colonization has, in fact, created the conditions for the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people that we are confronting today.

This long history of gendered colonial encounter shows that the policies, practices and stereotypes confronting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women and gender-diverse people today were put into place long ago. Indigenous ways of understanding land, governance and identity were targeted by colonizers wanting to possess the land and to rid it of its people. Key encounters – policies and rules, stereotypes, and misconceptions – were applied differently to Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, but have impacted each of them in harmful ways.

First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people in Canada have been the targets of violence for far too long. This truth is undeniable. The fact that this National Inquiry is happening now doesn’t mean that Indigenous Peoples waited this long to speak up; it means it took this long for Canada to listen.

More than 2,380 people participated in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, some in more ways than one.

The truths shared in these National Inquiry hearings tell the story – or, more accurately, thousands of stories – of acts of genocide against First Nations, Inuit and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This violence amounts to a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, which especially targets women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.