Canadian Inquiry Calls Killings of Indigenous Women Genocide

“Yes, genocide is exactly what’s happening, and Canada is still in denial about this,” said Lorelei Williams. No, we're not. The evidence doesn't substantiate it, and the term "genocide" shouldn't be thrown around lightly. Most murdered indigenous women were killed by indigenous men who knew them. As we already knew, this is rampant crime in rough and remote areas that lack adequate policing.

I don't think the situation is exactly genocide but it is leaving vulnerable people unprotected. Girls and young women are entitled to police protection even when they live up North.

It is unfortunate that the words “genocide” and “colonialism” have been used yet again, out of context, and inaccurately to describe the plight of First Nations women in this country. It serves no useful purpose to do so except to sow rancour and discord. As an academic, I have been involved in the MMIW debate for many years, and have deliberately distanced myself from it professionally as I saw it being hijacked by angry Indigenous politics from within, and opportunistic white parasitism from without which cashes in or gains misplaced prominence as a result. It must be painfully observed that most indigenous women are murdered or abused by indigenous men. The alternative would be that Canada is a nation of white serial killers who specialise in native victims which is preposterous. If a genocide is taking place, it is a gendercide being perpetrated by one sex against another. The real question is, why is this happening? One may blame colonialism in a sense because Canada still bears its imperial past with pride. First Nations, herded on to reserves in the 19 century, still live on the same reservations and the pressures are replete. The most common issue that I observe is that reservation societies closely mirror white society with wealth disparity being rampant. Chiefs and elders handsomely award themselves with funds that are denied the unelected, so colonialism is evenly practised across all walks of Canadian life. We must confront the real issues or be damned.

I will not accept the use of the word genocide. ..no way.

Let’s cut to the chase: the vast majority of perpetrators in these cases are indigenous men, a crucial fact absolutely not mentioned in this article. If white men raised in a culture of chauvinism and tolerance of violence towards women (see for instance Russia) murder women, the culprits are obviously the said white men. If indigenous men with the same attitude murder women, the culprit for the resulting genocide is the colonialist Canadian government. That’s probably what the progressive mean by white man privilege.

I watched a movie/documentary in the early eighties called "Code of Silence". Not it is not Chuck Norris. It was a story of a native Canadian girl given the opportunity to live with a white family and attend a white Canadian school - at that time considered to be an honor. Anyway, she was raped and killed. The story is more of a documentary of how the townspeople refused to talk about the incident - clearly unwilling to tell what they knew because it was just an Indian Girl. A very sad documentary/movie. Really opened my eyes to the treatment of the native people in Canada.

Throwing around the word genocide over 1000 missing or murdered women (not necessarily dead or missing due to the concerted actions of Canada but due to social dysfunction within Native American communities is inappropriate. If one has witnessed genocide, you don't characterize neglect as genocide. Genocide is the active pursuit of ethnic or racial extermination through organized violence. terror, murder on a mass scale. The Romans, Mongols, Russians,Turks, NAZIs and others have repeatedly engaged in organized military campaigns to exterminate entire non-combatant civilian populations deemed to be disloyal, undesirable or a threat (Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Tartars, etc.). A failure to address crimes against native American women while deplorable is by no means a genocide. Words have meaning and Genocide is a War Crime, A Crime Against Peace and a Crime Against Humanity. For example the Spanish Government ongoing war with the Basque separatist ETA is not genocide nor is Turkey's war against Kurdish terrorists groups genocide (unlike the systemic murder of 2 million Armenians, 1 million Greeks, and 600,000 Assyrians from 1890 to 1917) which was. When Columbus and others introduced Smallpox to the New World, it wiped out 90% of the native population in many areas of the Americas, but such catastrophic disease vectors are also not per se an act of genocide. Genocide is a crime - and claiming Canada is guilty of genocide is simply a damn lie..

Genocide is the correct word to use. The plan was to wipe out the First Nations people in Canada, destroy their communities, and culture. The government of Canada was either in the lead on this, or through neglect and lack of enforcement of land rights and criminal law, a passive actor. The remaining communities were so severely damaged, that they could hardly hold themselves together. I think some readers are keen to participate in a game of competitive victimhood, but the historic land grab, neglect, and de facto criminalization of being a native Canadian definitely amounts to one of the most thoroughgoing Genocides in history. The victims are deserving of respect and compensation.

When we look at how many Indigenous people were killed over the last 150 years of Canada's existence, and how they were not allowed to participate in the making of laws nor covered by the laws made, how can we say this isn't genocide??? In Canada, status Indians were not legally Canadians, nor could they vote in national elections until 1960. And then there is this: Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Canada (1913-1932), put it bluntly in the speech he gave in 1920: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. … Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.”That sounds like genocide to me...!

Genocide is the killing of every member of an ethnic group. Calling a handful of murders "genocide" devalues the language. It is an insult to the victims of actual genocide.

Even the prime minister of Canada avoided using the term genocide and he is never afraid of hyperbole. The commission was asked for recommendations to put a stop to these murders but chose instead to give us a history lesson and blame rather than any possible solutions. I’m a Caucasian male who grew up in western Canada and neither myself or my parents or my grandparents are complicit in any of the problems the natives are experiencing. I’m not responsible for the jails being heavily populated by fetal alcohol indigenous men and women. Ask general Romeo Dallaire if this is genocide, he saw the real thing up close.

It's genocide AND gynocide. Those calling it hyperbole and worse are unable to see beyond their own white Male privilege. As usual.

" The UN definition of genocide: the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. " As I study the term " Genocide " above by UN, it appears to me that the term can be easily applied to some of the policy of NRA. The NRA has succeeded so far in lobbying the legislature to prevent funding the Federal Government/NIH from collecting data regarding gun related death to investigate and study it as a public health issue. It is tragic for 1181 women or girls being killed in 32 years (37 per year) in Canada, but it is meager in comparison of 30 to 40 thousands gun related deaths in US. Don't you think it is time for the US government to shed some light on this dark issue to prevent further atrocities ?

I have had many Indigenous students whose families have been destroyed, generation after generation, by the effects of systematic, insidious, evil policies designed to reduce human beings to ghosts. It is sickening to learn the heartbreaking diminishment of their ancestors who suffered unparalleled horrors. Canadians - indeed, North Americans - who refuse to look the truth in the eye are only perpetuating the indignities and erasure of worth begun by colonial powers centuries ago. We will not move forward as a society until these wrongs are addressed. They are a festering wound of shame. Read Wenjack, by Joseph Boyden. Watch Secret Path by Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip. Read sections of the testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Research the Sixties Scoop. Refuse to buy into the revisionist perspective that would ignore and deny the very real cruelty endured by Indigenous peoples.

Am I wrong to say genocide is the wrong term for a large number of these murders? All the unsolved cases cannot be committed by strangers but these are the ones discussed. Do the murders by brothers, fathers, uncles become included as genocide as many missing women weren’t wandering the highway. Call me any name you want, put any label on me you care to but when do they start taking charge of their lives and lifestyle instead of blaming the white man?

The problem is that the word "genocide" is not being used properly here and is hyperbolic. Genocide is usually the deliberate killing of people because they are of a certain kind. I think we are talking about a mass sex crime here, where these women are not murdered because they were native but because they were the victims of extreme male lust. The type of man who rapes and murders women is not concerned about race.

If I don't agree that this is genocide am I guilty of hate speech?

A little embarrassing that a retired judge would sign off on a report recommending an automatic first degree murder charge based on the ancestry of the victim. Others here have criticized the inflammatory "genocide" conclusion. It's clearly a political report, not a legal one.

The reference Royal Canadian Mounted Police report says 1,017 Aboriginal women were murdered, but the murders were not genocidal in nature; neither were they hate crimes. The motive were argument (40%); frustration, anger or despair (20%); jealously (12%); no apparent motive (7%); other (5%); sexual violence (10%); and financial gain or settling accounts (6%) 29% were killed by their spouses while 23% were killed by some other family member. 10% percent were murdered by an “intimate” whole 20% were murdered by an acquaintance 8% were slain by strangers and 1% were slain by an unknown person for person. According to the report, “The majority of all female homicides are solved (close to 90%) and there is little difference in solve rates between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal victims.” http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/missing-and-murdered-aboriginal-women-national-operational-overview#sec4

Genocide? When the majority of the murders are committed by native relatives and acquaintances? The native community urgently needs help but they must want to help themselves wean off alcohol, drugs and mayhem. Misleading language does not help anyone.

Bernard Valcourt is not from Quebec; he's a member of Parliament from New Brunswick.

Genocide, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention is the commission of certain specified acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." The article describes no such thing, but rather individual crimes committed by various persons with various "motives" held only by the criminal, be they rage, control, the cover-up of an attendant crime, or any other reason motivating murders or other violence since Cain picked up a rock. Canada is not Rwanda or Nazi Germany. Language should not be debased and dishonestly stretched to gain attention to any cause, no matter how deserving of our attention. It is wrong-- whether the speaker has the nefarious motives of Donald Trump or the best liberal intentions. Pragmatically, it harms a good cause by reducing the credibility of the advocate. The truth matters.

People have a problem with the word genocide but in reality all the colonial powers have committed genocide of the native people who were here first, including the US. It feels good to hear Canada acknowledge it and want to do something about it. Now if only the US would do the same. That Trump has a picture of Andrew Jackson hanging in his office is an insult to every Native American in the US. We need to acknowledge the trail of tears as the genocide it was along with all the other atrocities committed against Native American people in this country.

Canada's equivalent of the NPR doesn't allow comments on articles about anything to do with our Indigenous population. Why? Cue the racists, the ignorant and the misinformed. There are only five comments here so far but the majority blame the victims. I once participated in a Reconciliation program where I worked closely with residential school survivors. It was the most depressing experience of my life. It took me months to recover from just hearing about it. I cannot imagine the horror of living it. If Aboriginal people in Canada live in deeply troubled communities, and many of them do, it because of the legacy of residential schools. They were often hell holes of abuse, both sexual and physical. Science experiments were performed feeding the children rotten food. At some schools, the death rate was near 30%. Families weren't even required to be notified if their child died. Try having your whole community live through that for decades and see how functional it is afterwards. Tragically, misinformation rules the non-Indigenous population. According to them, it's all free houses and government handouts. NYT should follow CBC's lead and stop comments on this topic. Too much is at stake for any further misinformation.

How pathetic and ironic. Today, the prime minister claims to hear Ingenious women in Canada. Yet, the most powerful Indigenous female official to ever hold high office in Canadian history was, only a few weeks, drubbed from his Liberal caucus to gales of delight, applause and rank toadyism. This showman simpleton has no shame. Resign PM.

Hmm...were indigenous men not subjected to this same genocide?

The article reports that rates of homicide are significantly higher among indigenous women in Canada but fails to mention that according to the same cited report, more than half are committed by a family member and 26% by an acquaintance. It appears that the majority of homicides are committed by members of their community. (This is the trend seen in violent crimes, i.e. they tend to occur between people from the same community). So I fail to see how this is classified as a genocide. From my understanding, many horrific injustices have been dealt to the indigenous peoples of Canada (and the U.S. for that matter) but I don't think genocide is the right word to describe what's happening here.

Wow if one were a serial killer I think they would have found the goldmine. The difference in response is all one needs to see. I have a weird feeling that most people offended by the Genocide remarks probably have liked posts or Youtube videos decrying "White Genocide" due to replacement theory. Everyone plays that card but only one group is actually dying in a way that seems systemic. The larger questions go beyond mere individual problems and towards asking how conditions got to where they are in the first place. The makers of those conditions must be beloved by our modern day Picktons and Jack the Rippers the world over.

There is no question that there are many people who wish and intend to keep the murderings of these women and girls as part of the Canadian culture. And those of us who want these murders to stop, must remember that. Our policing forces have been infected with a culture of brutality: from the systemic bullying within their workforce to the casual violence inflicted on civilians to driving over fawns multiple times to the callous disregard of murdered indigenous girls and women; they are not the protectors of civilians in Canadian society. This culture of brutality has been promoted and upheld by many people and groups and they will lie, cheat, assault and murder to keep it alive.

This is a huge problem in the United States also. If calling it genocide brings more attention to the abuse of indigenous women everywhere, then so be it. I agree there are problems within and without the indigenous communities. Both should be addressed. Problems of indigenous people have been ignored for too long. Poverty always equates powerlessness.

"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." So approximately 37 a year? As genocides go, this one is moving at glacial speed. As murders, they should be of concern.

I have reported on this and it IS happening in the USA.

I am a Canadian and I wholeheartedly support and endorse the findings of this report. The UN definition of genocide: the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Absolutely, Canada as a nation has been, and certain segments, institutions, and individuals continue to be, guilty of the above crime. Accepting the above, by the dominant culture, is difficult. But, as a nation, we must. And we must move forward from there, recognizing culpability. We must change institutions to better reflect a more inclusive society. And that only happens by recognizing and changing behavior in the present, based on reconciliation. As to the commenters who have (risibly) raised the point about "native" (sic) men, and all women, I say this: All aboriginal culture has been the victim of genocide, yes. But, all women (aboriginal and otherwise) are the easy prey victims of, overwhelmingly, men. Force yourself to acknowledge that basic and indisputable fact. I am a white, male Canadian - this is a part of my heritage. I'm not proud of it, but I don't deny it.

I am appalled at the use of the term genocide in this instance. Canadians are experiencing Indigenous-fatigue, always paying, paying, paying (via taxes) and it's never enough, always the hand out for more compensation for the past. And now we are once again to be cast as murderers?

This report rightly records the decades of official abuse that Canadian Aboriginals were subjected to. What this report fails to address are the failures of Canadian Aboriginal societies to effectively heal themselves despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been given them (at their request) to aid their healing. Is the predominant Angle-French society at fault? Yes. Is Aboriginal society blameless? Hardly.

I lean to the left and am a strong supporter of indigenous rights, but I am not sure that the evidence supports such a conclusion. Sad, but true, the reasons behind the murders of indigenous women are rather prosaic and not much different from the murders of non-indigenous women - i.e. that most are killed by partners or persons known to them; and many of those committing the murders are indigenous men. True many indigenous women, like other marginalised communities, tend to gravitate towards living and working in the margins of society (sex work, etc.) that makes them particularly vulnerable - but genocide. I understand the word to mean something very different - i.e. the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Balkans ethnic cleansing, etc. and certainly not applicable in this instance. By labelling it as such the Commission has done a disservice to a real and troubling problem in Canada - it has effectively shifted attention to its clearly political agenda rather than the issue it was tasked with addressing . . .

Washington State also has a high instance of indigenous (we mostly call them native american here) woman deaths and disappearances. But a shrill sounding charge of "Genocide!" is going to push denial and not solutions. It seems to me that there are factors such as poverty, remoteness of communities and substance abuse that play a large role in these tragic outcomes. It's not society at large trying to actively kill these woman. It's society not doing enough to help improve the lives of all people at the bottom of the economic ladder.

That is incredibly insulting considering more indigenous men have been killed over the same period than men. Canada is a gynocentric society.

As a Canadian I really take umbrage with the focus and content of this report. Over $80,000,000 have been wasted on this exercise in attempting to shift the blame for the deaths of aboriginal women to the populace of Canada. In fact, the majority of abuse and deaths of aboriginal women are carried out in their own communities and families. Contrary to the claims in the report, Canadian police are successful in charging a suspect(s) for the majority of these deaths, and it is usually an aboriginal male. This is not to say that Canada's aboriginal people have always been dealt with fairly by Canada's government, but there has been a seismic shift over past decades. What is missing however, is some indication that while pointing fingers at Canadians in general, there are also fingers pointing back at aboriginal leadership, which seemingly doesn't want to acknowledge the problems within their own communities.