Aboriginal Women Inquiry

Tina Fontaine, murdered 15-year-old aboriginal girl

"It would be an extremely complicated, painful and long-running process. Because an inquiry would involve examining and re-examining police investigations, there is likely to be plenty of evidence that cannot be made public because it is before the courts."
"Sometimes the problem is so complex and the areas of sensitivity are so great that sometimes things that need to be said can't be said."
"An inquiry is a really thorough thing to do and to do well. And also, when do you stop having inquiries with few results?"
Professor Kathy Brock, Queen's University's School of Policy Studies

The murder of this young girl whose naked body was found discarded in a river, wrapped in plastic, has reawakened the demand by the Native Women's Association of Canada along with leaders of the Parliamentary opposition and many others for the federal government to launch a national inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Why an inquiry is required is not clear; the fact is, much -- enough -- is known about the whys and wherefores of the situation as it is.

With respect to young Tina Fontaine, her mother Valentina Duck, estranged from her daughter, who had been placed in foster care, struggled with alcoholism, while her father Eugene was killed in 2011 by blunt-force trauma to the head, the result of a violent argument at a party on the Sagkeeng First Nation reserve. Two men were charged with second-degree murder after his body was discovered, dumped in a shed.

High-risk factors in aboriginal communities lead to dysfunction, the incapacity of parents to raise their children responsibly, to foster decent values in them, to present themselves as role models for their children to follow, to instill in their children an appreciation for education, and a love of learning, and the determination to make something of themselves as part of society. Instead, in First-Nations communities and on reserves, alcoholism and drug addiction are prevalent.

Leading to broken families and domestic violence. Fatally victimized aboriginal women are three times likelier than non-aboriginal women to have been drinking before a fatal incident (63% versus 20%), and over three times as likely to have a criminal record (44% versus 13%). Aboriginal women's murderers are almost always spouses, lovers, family members or acquaintances.

Of known killers of aboriginal women 62% had a history of family violence with the victim (43% for non-aboriginal women); 44% were drunk or high (as opposed to 15% for non-aboriginals).

In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, most of the women murdered or missing were aboriginal with histories of child abuse and incest; social behaviours that compel young aboriginal girls to leave reserves and send them on one-way bus trips to the city, where they then become susceptible to being preyed upon by violent men.

The rates of police crime-solving for aboriginal female homicides is 88%, in nudging distance of the 89% solve rate for non-aboriginal murdered women.

Without solving the seemingly intractable problems of First Nations social issues, including welfare, poverty, unemployment, education deficits and racism, the problems relating to social dysfunction within families with its toll on victims, both male and female, will never be grappled adequately.