The government must do more to reduce violence against Indigenous women, advocates said Friday at a Sisters in Spirit Vigil on Parliament Hill to commemorate missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people.
This marks 20 years since Amnesty International published its Stolen Sisters Report, which argued that poor record keeping made it impossible to accurately quantify the disproportionate levels of violence Indigenous Canadian women experience.
“We’ve been asking for truth, accountability and justice here on Parliament Hill for 20 years. I think this is enough,” event organizer Bridget Tolley told a crowd of about 100 people.
“What happened to the first recommendations we had 20 years ago with the Stolen Sisters report? How many recommendations have we had since? How many have been done? Why are we still here asking for the same things we asked for 20 years ago?”
Five years after a three-year national inquiry released a landmark report into violence against Indigenous women, few of its 231 calls for justice have been addressed. That report highlighted that the homicide rate among Indigenous women is nearly six times higher than for non-Indigenous women.
After speaking, Tolley had her braid cut as an act of mourning and the hair ceremonially burned in a pan with sacred medicines.
‘The spirit lives’
Later the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada Ketty Nivyabandi brought an old cassette tape with the voices of women who contributed to the original Stolen Sisters report.
“I brought it here to remind you that their voices live,” she said. “The spirit lives. It will not be erased. We hear their voices today.”
Nivyabandi called on the government to devote more resources to reducing violence against Indigenous women.
“And this state has the resources,” she said. “We need to do better, we cannot come back in 20 years from now to continue to ask for action.”
Amanda Fox and David Charette described their cousin, Chanel Charette, as always smiling and say memories of their childhood days together are helping them through their grief. Chanel died Sept. 26, two days after being struck by a vehicle while riding her bike in Vanier.
As roses were handed out, Indigenous advocates and leaders honoured Vanier woman Chanel Charette, 33, who died in hospital on Sept. 26, two days after being struck by a vehicle while cycling. Police have since charged Tony Bera, 25, with dangerous driving causing death.
Charette was a member of Wikwemikong First Nation, an Anishinaabe community on Manitoulin Island.
“She was a very good person, a straight friend for me,” said Joanne-Ann Warner, a friend of Charette who attended the ceremony.
“She should not have died like that. It wasn’t fair. There was no need for it.”