Canadian Inquiry Calls Killings of Indigenous Women Genocide

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada speaking on Monday during the closing ceremony of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec.CreditChris Wattie/Reuters
    ImagePrime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada speaking on Monday during the closing ceremony of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec.
    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada speaking on Monday during the closing ceremony of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec.CreditCreditChris Wattie/Reuters
    • June 3, 2019

  • GATINEAU, Quebec — The widespread killings and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls in Canada are a “genocide” for which Canada itself is responsible, a national inquiry concluded in its final report on Monday.

    Indigenous people from across Canada cheered, and raised fists and eagle feathers, as the leader of the inquiry announced the report’s findings at an emotional ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec, that was attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Most in the audience were in traditional Indigenous dress and held red flowers in remembrance of the women.

    Some in the crowd were relatives of the disappeared and dead, and were so overcome by emotion that they had to be led away in tears by health care workers.

    But despite Mr. Trudeau’s assurances in his remarks that his government would take action on the report’s 231 recommendations — including changes to police practices and the criminal justice system — some Indigenous people expressed skepticism that the report would make much of a difference.

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    “Our people have been in a violent relationship with Canada for too long,” said Beverley Jacobs, a prominent Mohawk lawyer and the former president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. “And when you’re in an abusive relationship and waiting for the abuser to change, but they’re not willing to change, you have to figure out how to get out of the relationship.”

    The report comes after a nearly three-year inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, during which more than 1,500 families of victims and survivors testified at hearings across the country.

    [“Canada and the system failed Tina at every step.” The death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was one of an increasing number of deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls that spurred a national inquiry.]

    “This is genocide,” said Marion Buller, the chief commissioner of the inquiry and a retired Indigenous judge, at the ceremony, which was held at the Canadian Museum of History directly across the Ottawa River from Parliament.

    A memorial for Tina Fontaine sits by the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The teenager’s killing in 2014 angered many people, setting off protests and questions about the deaths of Indigenous women in Canada.CreditAaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
    ImageA memorial for Tina Fontaine sits by the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The teenager’s killing in 2014 angered many people, setting off protests and questions about the deaths of Indigenous women in Canada.
    A memorial for Tina Fontaine sits by the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The teenager’s killing in 2014 angered many people, setting off protests and questions about the deaths of Indigenous women in Canada.CreditAaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times

    “An absolute paradigm shift is required to dismantle colonialism in Canadian society,” she added.

    After receiving the multivolume report, wrapped in a ceremonial blanket tied with a traditional Métis sash, Mr. Trudeau said, “This is an uncomfortable day for Canada but it is an essential day.”

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    He added, “To the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of Canada, to their families and to survivors — we have failed you.”

    Mr. Trudeau promised to “conduct a thorough review of this report,” including a “National Action Plan” to address the violence, “with Indigenous partners to determine next steps.”

    The report said the violence against women and girls amounted “to a race-based genocide of Indigenous peoples, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis.”

    “This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures,” the report added.

    It cited, among other events, Canada’s onetime practice of forcibly sending thousands of Indigenous children to government-sponsored residential schools, where they were abused over decades. In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called that practice a “cultural genocide.”

    The report said the police and the criminal justice system have historically failed Indigenous women by ignoring their concerns and viewing them “through a lens of pervasive racist and sexist stereotypes.”

    That, in turn, has created mistrust of the authorities among Indigenous women and girls, the report said.

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    Police “apathy often takes the form of stereotyping and victim-blaming, such as when police describe missing loved ones as ‘drunks,’ ‘runaways out partying’ or ‘prostitutes unworthy of follow-up,’” the report said.

    Survivors and their families told the inquiry they often found the “court process inadequate, unjust and retraumatizing.”

    Marching into the closing ceremony on Monday of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec, on Monday.CreditChris Wattie/Reuters
    Image
    Marching into the closing ceremony on Monday of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec, on Monday.
    Marching into the closing ceremony on Monday of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Quebec, on Monday.CreditChris Wattie/Reuters

    To help improve law enforcement and prevent violence against women, the report called for expanding Indigenous women’s shelters and improving policing in Indigenous communities, in particular in remote areas; increasing the number of Indigenous people on police forces; and empowering more Indigenous women to serve on civilian boards that oversee the police.

    It also called for changing the criminal code to classify some killings of Indigenous women by spouses with a history of violent abuse as first-degree murder, whether they were premeditated or not.

    Saying that cultural discrimination has marginalized Indigenous people, it also called for the federal and provincial governments to give Indigenous languages the same status as Canada’s official languages, English and French.

    The report offered a damning indictment not just of the killers but of a country that has too often allowed them to act with impunity.

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    “Yes, genocide is exactly what’s happening, and Canada is still in denial about this,” said Lorelei Williams, a leading Indigenous advocate in Vancouver whose aunt went missing four decades ago and whose cousin was murdered by the serial killer Robert Pickton.

    Indigenous women and girls make up about 4 percent of Canada’s females but 16 percent of the females killed, according to government statistics.

    Some 1,181 Indigenous women were killed or disappeared across the country from 1980 to 2012, according to a 2014 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Indigenous advocates, and the report, say the number is probably far higher since so many deaths have gone unreported.

    The national inquiry was convened after the body of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old girl from the Sagkeeng First Nation, was found in the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2014, wrapped in a duvet weighed down with 25 pounds of rocks.

    Her death and the subsequent acquittal of the main suspect in it spawned outrage and protests across Canada, as well as calls for an investigation into why so many Indigenous girls and women were dying.

    A rally in Toronto for Ms. Fontaine in February 2018.CreditBernard Weil/Toronto Star, via Getty Images
    Image
    A rally in Toronto for Ms. Fontaine in February 2018.
    A rally in Toronto for Ms. Fontaine in February 2018.CreditBernard Weil/Toronto Star, via Getty Images

    The case attracted particular opprobrium because Ms. Fontaine had been in contact with provincial social workers, the police and health care professionals in the 24 hours before her death.

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    Mr. Trudeau’s government has made a priority of addressing the country’s troubled colonial past. More than two years ago, he told the United Nations General Assembly that he was committed to righting historical wrongs.

    “For First Nations, Métis Nation and Inuit peoples in Canada, those early colonial relationships were not about strength through diversity, or a celebration of differences,” he said. “For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the experience was mostly one of humiliation, neglect and abuse.”

    Ms. Buller and the other commissioners said that much work remained before Canada fulfilled Mr. Trudeau’s commitments.

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    The commission’s use of the word genocide has attracted some criticism, particularly in Quebec, as an excessive and improper use of the term.

    But Ms. Buller repeatedly stood by the inquiry’s finding.

    “The type of genocide we have in Canada is death by a million paper cuts for generations,” she told journalists.

    Paul Tuccaro, a member the Mikisew Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, said he agreed with the inquiry’s description.

    Mr. Tuccaro’s younger sister, Amber, 20, disappeared in August 2010, he said. The mother of a 14-month-old son, she vanished after hitching a ride. Her remains were found in a farmer’s field, and a killer has never been found.

    “Whoever is doing what they’re doing, they think they can kill all these women, and nothing will come of it because they’re just ‘Indians,’” he said.

    Ian Austen reported from Gatineau, Quebec, and Dan Bilefsky from Montreal. Brandi Morin contributed reporting from Edmonton, Alberta.

    A version of this article appears in print on June 4, 2019, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Canadian Inquiry Describes Killings of Indigenous Women as Genocide. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe