Inquiry calls the murder and disappearance of indigenous women and girls "genocide"
"...[A] devastating national inquiry has
determined that the frequent and widespread disappearance and murder of
indigenous girls and women is a genocide that the Canadian government
itself is responsible for.
"This chilling conclusion was reported by the
Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and
Girls at a ceremony on Monday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and
the families of victims....
"This is Marion Buller, the chief commissioner of
the inquiry, speaking at the ceremony, which was held at the Canadian
Museum of History.
MARION BULLER:
The significant, persistent, and deliberate pattern of systemic racial
and gendered human and indigenous rights violations and abuses --
perpetuated historically and maintained today by the Canadian state,
designed to displace indigenous people from their lands, social
structures, and governments, and to eradicate their existence as nations,
communities, families, and individuals -- is the cause of the
disappearances, murders, and violence experienced by indigenous women,
girls, 2SLGBTQQIA people, and this is genocide.
DEMOCRACY NOW!: The inquiry
issued 231 [calls] on how to address the deaths. At the same
ceremony, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to conduct a thorough
review of the report.
P.M. TRUDEAU:
Time and again, we have heard of their disappearance, violence, or even
death being labeled low priority or ignored. We have heard of their
human rights being consistently and systematically violated. It is
shameful. It is absolutely unacceptable. And it must end.…
What happened?
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| State-sponsored Native American genocide, Wounded Knee, 1890 (Library of Congress) |
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A chilling national inquiry has conclusively determined that the frequent and widespread disappearance and murder of indigenous Native American females in Canada is a literal "genocide."
[The term is defined by the United Nations.] Moreover,
THE REPORT finds that the white Anglo-Saxon
government itself is responsible for these crimes against humanity.
The findings were announced by the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls at a ceremony on Monday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the families of a few of the victims.
It was designed by whites to displace First Nations/Native American people from their land and destroy their identity to strip them of everything that distinguished them from the imperial invaders.
Many in the audience held red flowers to commemorate the dead. The national inquiry was convened after the body of 15-year-old Native American Tina Fontaine from the Sagkeeng First Nation was found in the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2014.
The report follows decades of anguish and anger as indigenous communities have called for greater attention to the
epidemic of dead and missing indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual people (LGBTQQIA).
Some 1,500 family members of victims and survivors gave testimony to the commission, painting a picture of violence,
state-sanctioned neglect, and “pervasive racist and sexist stereotypes” that led nearly 1,200 indigenous women and girls to die or go missing between 1980 and 2012.
Indigenous activists say this number could be a massive undercount, as many deaths go unreported and unnoticed.
Democracy Now! speaks with Marion Buller, chief commissioner of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and Asst. Prof. Robyn Bourgeois, from the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at Brock University.
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What does "genocide" mean?
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| Genocide of Comanches by Texas Rangers James Thomas Bird and John J. Haynes, 1868 |
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| California's state-sanctioned genocide |
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; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. ...
According to Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "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...
