Petition: For a Gender-Inclusive Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Canadians

[Posted to Change.org and now open for signature/circulation: November 13, 2015]

We, the undersigned, call for a gender-inclusive inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal Canadians, and the crisis of violence that afflicts Aboriginal communities nationwide.

The issue of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls is a matter of the highest national urgency. It should be a focal point of any inquiry. We applaud the efforts of women activists, especially in Aboriginal communities, to press this issue in the face of considerable resistance from the dominant society, and to establish it as a prominent social and political concern.

In our view, though, it is unacceptable to limit an inquiry or investgation of murdered and missing Aboriginals to Native women and girls alone. Men and boys account for over 70 percent of total Aboriginal murder victims in Canada. We cannot state with certainty what proportion of missing Aboriginal Canadians they compose, as the RCMP refuses to share the relevant data. Nonetheless, it is highly likely that the proportion of men and boys among missing Aboriginals is comparable to their overrepresentation in homicide (and suicide) statistics.

We protest the arbitrary exclusion of the majority of Aboriginal murder victims, and at least a substantial proportion of the missing, from the universe of ethical and political concern. We call for a rigorously gender-inclusive inquiry into the issue of murdered and missing Aboriginal Canadians, and into broader patterns of violence within and against Aboriginal communities, including structural violence and the legacy of Canada’s dispossession of Native peoples, domestic and partner violence, child abuse (including in the residential school system), suicide, homelessness, and addiction issues. Any such inquiry must respond above all to the wishes, perspectives, and priorities of Aboriginal communities, families, and citizens. It should also be sensitive to factors and variables beyond indigeneity and gender, and the intersections among them.

Aboriginal signatories to this petition call for reconsideration and broadening of the limited, gender-exclusive campaign for an inquiry into murdered and missing Native Canadians. Those from the dominant society and abroad express their solidarity with First Nations peoples, and call for the generalized crisis of violence against them to be placed at the forefront of the national agenda.

[SIGN THE PETITION]

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Supporting Documentation:

"Are We Ignoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men?", CBC Unreserved, 25 October 2015.

Adam Jones, "Aboriginal Men are Murdered and Missing ...", National Post, 27 April 2015.