My Daugther's Letter to Our MP: We Need to Do More About the Crisis Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada

My daughter has been blessed with amazing teachers this semester. In particular, she has had Civics and History teachers who teach by "themes" (not just chronologically), allowing kids to dig into issues that matter, both historically and today. Man, I wished I had learned this way when I was in school (but then again, we would have had to learn about real issues versus the whitewashed version in the '80s.)

She has always had a justice value, and it's been a beautiful thing to behold seeing it blossom into her writing, in the topics she chooses in her projects, in the topics she brings to the dinner table, in seeing her get angry about injustice still happening today (and why we all aren't angrier about them), and her re-elevating her career choices.

One of the projects she needed to do for Civics involved writing a letter to someone in a position of influence or power on any subject they learned about that semester. Here is her letter about our unresolved crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada.

I stand behind her. As much as our global pandemic should capture our hearts and minds, it is not the only issue we're facing. We can't forget about the other crises happening all around us, including invisible ones. This why I am sharing as a LinkedIn article.

We all own this problem. And we can all do our part. What is your role?

Her letter on route to our MP:

Dear X,

I am writing to you because I am very concerned about missing indigenous women and girls. I am a 15-year-old girl myself and I can’t imagine how much fear indigenous girls my age must feel knowing that 1200 aboriginal women and girls have been murdered or gone missing over the last three decades.

It has been over four years since the Royal Canadian Mounted Police made the statement: “First Nations women are four times more likely to go missing or to be murdered than other Canadian women.” This has been happening for decades now and why have such minimal things been done about it? Why is it that Canada’s 1.6 million indigenous people have higher levels of poverty and lower life expectancy than other Canadians?

It was in 1980 that we started noticing how big of an issue this was; it took us that long to start paying attention. This had most likely been going on for years before that, although the media only started covering it once 150 aboriginal women were murdered that year. How did we not do anything sooner? Canadians knew this was wrong. Yet no real action happened until 2016 when the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was launched indicating that we were finally taking this seriously. 

Some people still do not see the problem. Non-aboriginal women go missing and get murdered every year. But aboriginal women have less of a voice. We would notice if one white girl goes missing and the next day it’s all over the news, but it took us hundreds of missing aboriginal girls to show we even care as Canadians, and another three decades for the government to show they care enough to supply them with funding. We all should be angry about this. 

Indigenous people have always been pushed to the side and been considered less important. These homicides are a direct result of systematic racism. 

Indigenous people have protested for basic things to change in aboriginal communities for years - things like trauma support, safe transportation, better healthcare - but still their quality of life is lower than the average Canadian. Not only did they suffer years of colonialism, but they are also still paying the price with their lives. Their voices continue to go unheard. Aboriginal women continue to go missing and are murdered every year at higher rates than any other racial group. There is still not enough protection; the most important thing we should be providing these women is safety and it needs to happen immediately. Not enough is being done today.

I appreciate that the government has put some funding toward this crisis. You first funded $54 million over 5 years of which I know $8.3 million was to better support shelters serving victims of family violence in First Nations communities and $10.4 million for the building of 5 new shelters. I also realize that as of last year, the Government of Canada had invested over $200 million to aboriginal communities to prevent gender-based violence, support survivors and their families, and try to have a more responsive legal and justice system. This may be a start but I believe that there is still more we can and should do because women are still at risk every day. It is still more dangerous to be born as an indigenous girl in this country than it is to be born white. There is no way this should be happening in 2020.

Even if a girl is not murdered, they still are more likely to experience mental and physical abuse as well as be forced into sex trafficking and prostitution. Why? Because they are the most vulnerable Canadians. Indigenous women and girls have so little money and supplies they are preyed upon and abused. The generations of abuse keep this cycle going. It is not a simple fix. But it needs to be fixed, and I hope people like you in government are committed to ensuring this gets fixed.

Women and girls deserve to have safe places like women's shelters, transition houses, mental health centres and hospitals with doctors and nurses who are properly educated and know how to diagnose mental health issues. This is extremely important because many of these aboriginal women and even many men have gone through a lot of trauma and sometimes it’s so hard to cope with that their struggles end in suicide. This care should also be sensitive to their culture and be provided by other indigenous women whenever possible. Where is the funding for the education of women and girls so they have a better future and can be trained for careers such as nursing and social work so they can help their fellow indigenous women?

You may be wondering why I am writing to you about this. We live in Niagara and do not even have a reserve here. But women are at risk here. Indigenous women live here. Sex trafficking happens here. Domestic violence happens here. What is Niagara doing about this? How much do you know about the lives of aboriginal people living off reserves living in our community? Are they safe? Do they have someone they can turn to if they aren’t safe? First, you need to find out. You are our elected official. Then, you need to act on this information. Bring it to parliament and join a task force. Advocate for more funding to help in this crisis. Anything that will help. I hope you’re as angry as I am, a 15-year-old girl, as you have way more power to do something about this than I do. Please do not let another girl or woman be murdered or go missing because you could have done something more.

Sincerely, 

Simonne McVanel