National Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women in Canada

Admin
Administrator

Posts: 72,791

National Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women in Canada Jun 9, 2019 0:27:08 GMT

Quote

Post by Admin on Jun 9, 2019 0:27:08 GMT

The national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women wants health service providers across Canada to develop programs that could help young people recognize the signs of being targeted for exploitation.

The inquiry’s final report, released publicly Monday morning with more than 200 recommendations to the federal government, calls violence against First Nations, Metis and Inuit women and girls a form of “genocide” and a crisis that has been “centuries in the making.”

Among the calls for justice in the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are a handful that urge everyone to become allies, to combat racism and to break down barriers.

CBC Radio One's 'As It Happens' is telling the stories of Canada's murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. Host Carol Off interviews Matthew Bushby, who still holds out hope that he’ll see his fiancé, Claudette Osborne, again.

Included in the report, which was released earlier this week, are these recommendations:

Develop knowledge and read the final report. Listen to the truths shared, and acknowledge the burden of these human and Indigenous rights violations, and how they impact Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA [two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual] people today.
Using what you have learned and some of the resources suggested, become a strong ally. Being a strong ally involves more than just tolerance; it means actively working to break down barriers and to support others in every relationship and encounter in which you participate.
Confront and speak out against racism, sexism, ignorance, homophobia and transphobia, and teach or encourage others to do the same, wherever it occurs: in your home, in your workplace, or in social settings.

In all, the report, which concluded that murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls were victims of a wider genocide, lists 231 steps that need to be taken by governments and Canadians in order to make substantive changes.

Reclaiming Power and Place

The National Inquiry’s Final Report reveals that persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. The two volume report calls for transformative legal and social changes to resolve the crisis that has devastated Indigenous communities across the country.

The Final Report is comprised of the truths of more than 2,380 family members, survivors of violence, experts and Knowledge Keepers shared over two years of cross-country public hearings and evidence gathering. It delivers 231 individual Calls for Justice directed at governments, institutions, social service providers, industries and all Canadians.

As documented in the Final Report, testimony from family members and survivors of violence spoke about a surrounding context marked by multigenerational and intergenerational trauma and marginalization in the form of poverty, insecure housing or homelessness and barriers to education, employment, health care and cultural support. Experts and Knowledge Keepers spoke to specific colonial and patriarchal policies that displaced women from their traditional roles in communities and governance and diminished their status in society, leaving them vulnerable to violence.

www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/

Last Edit: Jun 14, 2019 19:14:59 GMT by Admin

Admin
Administrator

Posts: 72,791

National Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women in Canada Jun 9, 2019 4:25:12 GMT

Quote

Post by Admin on Jun 9, 2019 4:25:12 GMT

That was July 10, 2008. Fifteen days later, Osborne disappeared. Tracing her last steps is excruciating for Bushby and the rest of Osborne's family: On July 24, 2008 she left a message for her sister, Tina Osborne.

In the message, Osborne said she needed a ride home because she was in bad company. Tina didn't hear it until two days later, when she added minutes to her cell phone. The first Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) press release on Osborne circulated almost two weeks after she went missing. The WPS reported Winnipeg's Selkirk Avenue and Charles Street, an inner-city area known to sex-trade workers, was the last place she was seen.

On May 12, 2009, nine months after the WPS's initial report, police said Osborne was actually last seen at the Lincoln Motor Hotel on McPhillips Street. Finally, more than two years after she vanished, the WPS said Osborne moved from the hotel to the corner of Selkirk Avenue and King Street before she was seen for the last time. According to Bushby, police traced Osborne's calling card and discovered she was at Selkirk Avenue and King Street, using a pay phone around 6:30 a.m. on July 25, 2008.

In July 2012, Project Devote, a task force dedicated to investigating missing and murdered persons cases in Manitoba, took on Osborne’s case. Bernadette Smith is frustrated with the number of officers that have investigated and abandoned her sister’s disappearance. "...Claudette has had more than two officers on her case... We've had about four or five since she's been missing." Smith said aspects of the case could get lost in translation because the notes that one officer takes may be difficult for a new officer to understand. When it comes to the possibility of a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, Smith said it won't be enough to solve the problem. "...On one hand I don't want an inquiry if that's the only thing they are going to do and not do action... Our women need to be safe now," she said. "How many more will go missing or [get] murdered by the time an inquiry is complete? And we don't know if they are going to implement any of the recommendations they are going to get from it."

Admin
Administrator

Posts: 72,791

National Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women in Canada Jun 14, 2019 19:14:25 GMT

Quote

Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2019 19:14:25 GMT

Canada’s report on missing indigenous women and girls is alarming and horrifying. The results of a government enquiry launched by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016 revealed a few weeks ago that in recent decades, violence against Indigenous women and Indigenous girls has reached the levels of genocide. Although the report does not come with a conclusive number of deaths or disappearances, there have been estimations which calculate the number of victims as more than a thousand.

The term genocide used by the report is not something of lesser relevance. In fact, the word genocide was first thought up by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944 after the heinous acts committed in World War II against the Jewish population, and literally means the killing of a race: genos from the Greek word for race or tribe, and cide which signifies killing in Latin. In December 1946, before the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined the horrendous practice, the UN General Assembly through Resolution 96 (I) established that genocide was a crime under the international law. Currently, the definition contained within the Genocide Convention, which has been used in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and was also adopted by the International Criminal Court, establishes that genocide means the physical destruction in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Although the present definition of genocide primarily covers the physical destruction of a group with the practice known as cultural genocide left out of the convention, Canada has faced allegations of conducting actions and policies that have attempted to destroy the specific characteristics of aboriginal communities in its territory, actions prohibited today under the current international legal system. The program of residential schools was a government policy that aimed for the total assimilation of Indigenous children into mainstream values. Under this program they were forced to learn English or French and obliged to adopt the Christian religion; this might meet the criteria for the conduct of “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” described in the Convention as a form of genocide, since it is estimated that at least 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and obliged to attend the residential schools.

The above was acknowledged by the report and according to some media statements the document specifically states that this genocide has been permitted by colonial structures, residential schools and a systematic breach of human rights that has led to an increasing rate of violence against the Indigenous population, particularly toward Indigenous women and girls.