Julie McGregor
June 20, 2019
- On June 3, 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (National Inquiry) released its final report titled Reclaiming Our Power and Place (Final Report).
- The Final Report consists of two volumes and features 11 chapters exploring the multiple intersectional issues that contribute to the problems of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In addition to the Final Report, the National Inquiry also published two supplementary reports: one for the province of Quebec and one specifically addressing the issue of Genocide.
- The Final Report also includes four general findings related to the recognition of rights, justice, security, health, and wellness. It includes Calls for Justice and 231 recommendations for governments (including Indigenous governments), institutions, industries, service providers, partners, and all Canadians. The Final Report includes specific Calls for Justice for Inuit, Métis, and Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, or asexual (2ELGBTQQIA) persons.
Background of the National Inquiry
- More than 2,380 people participated in the National Inquiry’s hearings. Four hundred sixty-eight family members and survivors of violence shared their experiences and formulated recommendations during 15 community hearings.
- More than 270 family members and survivors testified during 147 private or in-camera sessions.
- 83 expert witnesses, Elders and Knowledge Keepers, frontline workers, and official representatives testified during nine specialized hearings.
General Findings
1. The Commissioners determined that a significant, persistent, and deliberate pattern of systematically violating and undermining human and Indigenous rights—based on race and gender—has been historically perpetuated and is maintained today by the Canadian state. This pattern aims to strip Indigenous peoples of their lands, social structures, and governing powers, and to eradicate their existence as Nations, communities, families, or individuals. This pattern is the cause of the disappearances, murders, and violence targeting Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people, and it represents a genocide.
This colonialism, discrimination, and genocide explain the high rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people.
Genocide
- The supplementary report titled “A Legal Analysis of Genocide” (the Report) explains the Inquiry’s conclusion that Canada’s treatment of First Nations is a genocide that continues to this day.
- The National Inquiry’s finding that genocide has been committed is not based solely on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Report concludes that genocide does not only mean the deliberate killing of part or all members of a specific social group. Genocidal intent can also be interpreted as including the destruction of a group as a social unit.
- The Report concludes that genocide is not necessarily a one-time event, such as the Holocaust or the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Instead, the Report concludes that the genocide perpetrated against First Nations is a “composite act.” It results from the cumulative effect of many discrete actions, such as land alienation, neglect, starvation, the removal of children from their families to be placed in Indian Residential Schools, and the forced sterilization of Indigenous women.
2. Canada has signed and ratified numerous international declarations and treaties concerning the rights, protection, and safety of Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people. Canada has failed to meaningfully implement the provisions of many international legal mechanisms, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN Declaration). Furthermore, the Canadian state has enacted domestic laws, including, but not limited to, Section 35 of the Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and human rights legislation intended to provide legal protection for human rights and Indigenous rights. Consequently, all governments, including Indigenous governments, have an obligation to respect and protect the Indigenous and human rights of all Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people in accordance with these laws.
Canada has failed to protect these rights, failed to acknowledge the reality of the violations consistently perpetrated against Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people, and failed to provide redress. Within the Canadian state, there is no accessible or reliable mechanism for Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people to seek recourse or reparations for violations of the human and Indigenous rights granted to them under domestic and international law. The Canadian legal system is unable to hold the state and state actors accountable for their failure to meet their human rights and Indigenous rights obligations on both national and international levels.
3. The Canadian state has stripped Indigenous women and 2ELGBTQQIA people of their traditional roles in governance and leadership and continues to violate their political rights. This situation stems from concerted efforts to destroy Indigenous governance systems and replace them with colonial and patriarchal governance models, such as the Indian Act, as well as the imposition of laws of general application across Canada.
Indigenous governments or bands, as established under the Indian Act or as local municipal administrations, do not inspire full confidence among Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people. Indeed, because their authority was established based on colonial laws, Indigenous bands and councils, as well as community leaders, are generally not seen as representing the full interests of Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people.
4. The Commissioners recognize that self-determination and self-governance are fundamental Indigenous and human rights, as well as best practices. Self-determination and self-governance are necessary in all sectors of Indigenous society to adequately serve and protect Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people, particularly regarding service delivery. The efforts made by Indigenous women, girls, and 2ELGBTQQIA people toward self-determination are hindered by significant obstacles.
Numerous Indigenous women’s rights organizations and community organizations, whose essential work helps support survivors of violence and the families of missing or murdered loved ones and helps them regain a sense of safety, are indeed underfunded and undersupported within the current funding systems and formulas. Provisional and gap-filling approaches do not build capacity for self-determination or self-governance, fail to offer adequate protection and safety, and are powerless to ensure substantive equality. Short-term or project-based funding models in service sectors are not sustainable. They represent a violation of inherent rights to self-governance, as well as a failure to provide funding in an equitable, meaningful, stable, and needs-based manner.
Calls for Justice
- The Final Report also includes Calls for Justice and 231 recommendations to governments (including Indigenous governments), institutions, industries, service providers, partners, and all Canadians.
- The Calls for Justice include recommendations in the following areas: government human rights obligations, culture, health and wellness, human security, justice, media and social influencers, health and wellness service providers, transportation services and the hospitality industry, police services, lawyers and law societies, social workers and child welfare intervenors, extractive and resource development industries, Correctional Service Canada, and calls for justice for the general Canadian population.