Missing and Murdered Women and Girls - Part Three

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children – Part Three

            Ms. Poitras is right in her determination that these issues have been studied to death and discussed to death by now and none of the solutions have worked or are likely to. Bureaucrats are good at organizing meetings arranging study groups and so on. But what do they know of Indigenous culture?  What do they know about the deep and rich spiritual heritage that underlies the very fabric of Indigenous communities? You have to be an Indigenous person to know these things.

            And what do they know of the pain and anguish of those who are left to mourn for their loved ones lost in such a brutal way? Not much, I think. Still, they have a purpose. They are good at organizing and running focus groups, and they have access to funding. They should confine themselves to those tasks.

            It’s my opinion that the whole commission should be made up of those people victimized by these tragedies. These people will understand what is needed. It’s also my opinion that the commission should muster the many tools available to it within the Indigenous community. What I mean is that there are Indigenous publishing companies, a major Indigenous television station, writers and actors who can bring these stories into reality. And above all we have the Museum of Human Rights where the stories can be told for the whole world to hear. Where else will you get a better audience?

            To my way of thinking, the Indigenous community needn’t wait for some white man’s commission to go through all its protocols in order to tell its stories. Each nation and each community has its own management structure. And each has an affiliation to a national structure. If the chiefs ever want to do something for their people, they will join forces to marshal all these things together and begin the process of putting themselves on the world map.

            No one needs to wait for government approval or bureaucratic formatting for permission to tell their stories. You’d think there’d be a large studio in the Museum of Human Rights where people are brought in for this very purpose and the process begins. I don’t pretend to have any organizational knowledge of the process. I just know it can be done and a few people who could do that. Before you know it there would be a flood of people coming to share their stories and it would finally take shape for the world to see what Canada is made of and how we treat people of ethnic origin. But it takes the people from each community, not the chiefs and counsels. The people affected need to pressure their administrations to make this happen. Perhaps the “Idle No More” people can mobilize a groundswell of ordinary people to participate.

            My mention of the Mennonites at the outset of this series was not frivolous but had its purpose in pointing out the importance of stories. There is a whole shelf in my book case of stories told by Mennonites of that terrible era. We know what happened, why and how. That doesn’t make it any easier particularly, but at least we can move on, knowing our experience has been recorded for all time.

            But that’s the whole thing. There must be a groundswell from the people themselves. It’s time the government and the bureaucrats acknowledge that Indigenous people ARE people too.  They have a value! The pride in their heritage has been beaten down so much over the years by the Europeans that they dare not speak of their self worth other than amongst themselves.