A Modern Canadian Genocide: The MMIWG
When I decided to look into the 'MMIWG’ or the missing and murdered Indigenous women & girls of Canada, I thought I would take a quick little look at the numbers and whip up a nice piece.
I can’t do that because this is definately not a nice and neat numbers piece.
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If there’s just one thing for you to take away from this article, it’s this; these women and girls have been let down at every turn.
Our gradual recognition and understanding of this modern genocide started 2004 when Amnesty International reported the epidemic in the paper 'Stolen Sisters'.
It should have been simple to verify this report with concrete numbers, but no one could agree on the numbers.
There were calls for Prime Minister Harper open a national inquiry, which were repeatly dismissed. His government repeatedly deflected and downplayed the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women for a decade. During his time as PM, Stephen Harper even tried to go so far as to cut millions in federal funding to the group who was trying to ascertain an accurate number of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
After a decade of bad behaviour and bad politics by almost everyone involved, the RCMP finally released some hotly contested numbers in 2014.
1181 Missing or Murdered Indigenous women and Girls from 1982 to 2012.
Newly elected PM Justin Trudeau called an inquiry in 2015. Many people, including myself, were ready the hear more.
The national inquiry reached a very shocking conculsion. Genocide.
A supplemental report noted:
'This report is limited to a legal analysis of genocide, but the National Inquiry’s findings call for a broader examination of other international crimes, including in particular, crimes against humanity.'
In June 2019, Trudeau accepted the findings of genocide by the National Inquiry after noteable hesitation. There has been muted and mixed opinions of the use of the word 'genocide' from other politicians.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re still stunned, but we as Canadians should have a heck of a lot more to say about it all. The world should have a lot more to say about it all.
It’s genocide! GENOCIDE!
I have been writing about this for days and I still cannot get a coherent sentence out explaining how deeply that bothers me and why.
I will say this; I am not feeling very happy with the general morality that exists in the world right now. Greed rules without mercy. I like to think that Canadians are good people but this... all... feels terrible, as it should.
Our racism is showing.
There has been minimal news coverage or conversations even though we’re on the heels of a new federal election.
If the government flips back to Conservative, what will happen with the MMIWG?
If Scheer is elected, will we all be secretly thrilled if he throws out the results of the inquiry? Will he reaffirm his belief that the finding of genocide was incorrect?
Women are still dying. The genocide is still continuing in Canada.
Every month, at least 2 or 3 native Canadian women go missing or are killed. It is surprisingly consistent.
You may be thinking that these women are mostly being killed by their violent partners. I have seen and heard this misconception a lot, because rates of domestic violence are very high for native women.
Even so, aboriginal women are less likely to be killed by a spouse or family member, than the average Canadian.
I hope I can make this clear, because so many people misunderstand these statistics. Aboriginal women are killed by their partners less often than non native women, at 29% compared to 41% of female homicide victims. That makes them less likely, than most Canadian women, to die in a domestic violence situation.
So how’s it happening?
Native women are more likely to be killed by a causual aquaintance, by being beaten or stabbed to death. Looking at the stats, it seems that these women are more likely to die violently in an arguement that occurs randomly during everyday life gone wrong.
Yes, there high rates of intoxication by both the victim (33%) and perpetrator (71%). Unemployment rates and criminal history are also high for both.***
It paints a terrible picture of everyday life for aboriginal women.
Native women make up 4% of Canada’s total population but comprise of at least 16% of total female homicide victims. They're being murdered at a much greater rate than the general population. Native women are 9 times more likely to be the victim of a serial killer.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about Robert Pickton the BC pig farmer and possibly worst Canadian serial killer. Aboriginal prostitutes were a favourite of his.
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So where do we go from here?
Baby steps?
More awareness.
Small actions.
Small conversations.
There’s a new show in the works here in Canada, called Taken. It will be featuring the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. It’s a fantastic idea and I hope it will be a great show. They certainly have enough cases to feature.
I know they would never do it this way, but theortically if they featured 2 women an episode, they could release a new episode everyday for 2 years and have no overlap in content. Thats a lot of murdered and missing women.
Hopefully projects like these will help bring about more awareness and compassion as we stumble to find logical solutions to difficult problems.
Comments, criticism and words of encouragement are always welcome.
All the stats can be found here:
** https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiwg-inquiry-new-cases-statistics-databases-1.5162482
*** http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/missing-and-murdered-aboriginal-women-national-operational-overview
Amnesty International Stolen Sisters- https://www.amnesty.ca/sites/default/files/amr200032004enstolensisters.pdf
Supplemental Report on Genocide - https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Supplementary-Report_Genocide.pdf
"Taken" https://www.takentheseries.com