Bennett said the commission would have the “historic” ability to gather information across Canada and she thanked the indigenous families that have already shared their experiences.
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The federal government has announced the terms of a long-awaited inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women, unveiling that it will need at least $13.8 million more for the study than was originally expected.
“I feel very overwhelmed, emotional, yet hopeful at the same time. Some have been fighting for this for over 30 years”, said Williams, who spoke Wednesday with a coalition of aboriginal and advocacy groups in Vancouver.
That money, $16.7 million in total, will be distributed among provincial and territorial governments, who are responsible for justice and policing in Canada. After documenting how indigenous women and girls were under-protected by the police in northern BC-as well as how some had experienced outright police abuse-we saw the urgent need for an independent, impartial inquiry.
“We suffer extreme rates of violence”. During the pre-inquiry phase, families said examination of the police role is critical and should be central because they believe police aren’t doing enough to protect Indigenous women and investigate their cases when they do disappear.
Unrelenting pressure from families has been a major factor, but they have been joined by a wide network that includes First Nations organizations and leaders, agencies such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission, premiers such as Brad Wall and Kathleen Wynn and even Canada’s police services, including the RCMP. It found that 67 percent were murder cases, whereas 20 percent involved missing women or girls.
Still, she has faith in Canada’s first federal aboriginal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. Marion Buller, the first female First Nations judge in British Columbia, will serve as the chief commissioner for the inquiry. CBC News describes Buller as “a trailblazer in the legal community”.
“It hurts”, Tolley said, with tears streaming down her face.
“We recognize that five people can not represent the diversity of our country and NWAC will work with the National Inquiry to ensure that all voices that need to be heard will be heard”.
As a former B.C. regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, she has an intimate knowledge of the problem. “Women in the community know that that’s not the case”.
We know why our women are going missing. “I think there’s still some work to be done, but now that burden falls on the shoulders of the commissioners to see what can be done to get justice and get answers for those families”.
She said there will be a feedback loop between the victim support services and the commission to ensure families are satisfied with the help they’re getting. “We want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to this because it’s too important to get it wrong”.
She added that the inquiry must look at how to deal with ongoing systemic racism.
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The federal government has earmarked almost $54 million for the inquiry, which is set to begin on September 1 and run through to the end of December 2018.
