Opinion: Native women won't feel safe without action in Canada

Monday, March 2, 2015  

Vivian Tuccaro, center, supports inquiry into missing and murdered Native women. Her daughter, Amber Tuccaro, was murdered in 2010, a crime that remains unsolved. Photo by Waubgeshig Rice / CBC / Twitter

Christa Big Canoe and Melina Laboucan-Massimo call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Native women in Canada:

For both of us it is disheartening to listen to rhetoric from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government about how MMIW and a national inquiry into the issue is unimportant.

Harper would have the public believe that "We should not view this as a sociological phenomenon. We should view it as crime."

The Canadian public has heard the prime minister saying, in response to a question about whether the government was considering a national inquiry: “it isn’t really high on our radar, to be honest.”

Well, if honesty matters, then it should not surprise the federal government or the prime minister that indigenous people are literally at wits end about their treatment and Canada’s failure to value indigenous women’s lives.

This past Thursday a report from the Legal Research Strategy Coalition was released. The report reviewed 58 studies and the key findings and recommendations from those studies.

Shockingly, researchers found that only a few of over 700 recommendations in these reports have ever been fully implemented. This report demonstrates that the government’s stance that MMIW is not a sociological phenomenon is wrong.

Get the Story:
Christa Big Canoe and Melina Laboucan-Massimo: Missing and murdered: What it will take for indigenous women to feel safe (CBC 3/1)

Some Opinions:
Dan Latt: What's missing is action (The Winnipeg Free Press 3/2)
Stephen Maher: Harper and aboriginals not in same room, let alone on same page (The National Post 2/27)

Also Today:
Damning Report Reveals Canada's Indifference Toward Indigenous Women (Common Dreams 2/26)
Missing and murdered aboriginal women inquiry a must, report says (CBC 2/26)
Politicians, First Nations agree to another roundtable before end of 2016 (CP 2/27)
Round table on missing indigenous women results in few concrete step (The Globe and Mail 2/27)