A failure to follow through
We have witnessed how the Ontario government has failed to follow through on their promises to end violence against Indigenous people.
As a doctoral student who has volunteered with women and youth in and out of prisons, and an Anishinaabe midwife and assistant professor, we have heard first-hand how dire this crisis is. Staff at Thunder Woman Healing Lodge Society have told us that they’ve waited more than eight hours for women scheduled to be released from the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton, Ont., and that some were released as late as 10:30 p.m. with no access to transportation or accommodation.
The implementation of global standards for Indigenous rights is urgent and essential to the work of reconciliation.
Ry Moran is the inaugural associate university librarian-reconciliation at the University of Victoria and is the former director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Craig Benjamin is a writer and researcher who works with the Coalition for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples. SHARES ‘Without a profound change in the relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, there can be no justice, no healing and no end to the daily violations of Indigenous peoples’ human rights.’
Photo of the 2021 Women’s Memorial March by Jennifer Gauthier.
We’re still waiting for the results of a one-year-old FOI request.
Amanda Follett Hosgood is The Tyee’s northern B.C. reporter. She lives in Wet’suwet’en territory. Find her on Twitter @amandajfollett. SHARES The RCMP spent $1 million a month policing the Coastal GasLink pipeline route in Wet’suwet’en territory. One year after a Tyee FOI, the force still won’t reveal what it spends to investigate murdered and missing Indigenous women.
Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.
Canada’s national police service can’t or won’t reveal what it spends investigating cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, despite a national inquiry’s conclusion that violence against Indigenous women is “deliberate race, identity and gender-based genocide.”