Quebec Native Women: Nānīawig Māmawe Nīnawind. Stand With Us. Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women in Quebec
Press Release
November 15, 2016
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Quebec Native Women would like to thank the Mohawk Nation for each day allowing us to work on its unceded traditional territory.
Quebec Native Women (QNW) wishes to sincerely thank the families of missing & murdered Indigenous women who so generously agreed to share their stories. We wish to acknowledge the essential contributions of some 30 participants who took the time to answer our questions. We also thank the directors of Indigenous women’s shelters and QNW’s Nation representatives who helped us to shape this exploratory investigation.
Thank you to Carole Lévesque and Dominique Raby (INRS) for their support throughout the project and to the DIALOG team members who contributed to editing this report.
We thank the Ministry of Justice for the funding it provided for every stage of this investigation.
We thank the Ministry of Health and Social Services, the Secrétariat à la condition feminine, the Secrétariat aux affaires autochtones, the Department of Justice Canada and Health Canada, for their financial contribution towards the spring 2015 missing and murdered Indigenous women’s family members’ gathering. We also thank the Couvent Val-Morin for welcoming us.
We thank the members of the support team who were present during the family members’ gathering: Jean Stevenson and Delbert Sampson, Anik Sioui, Wanda Gabriel and Pascale Annoual.
We thank each and every person or organization we called upon during this investigation for sharing their particular expertise: Karine Gentelet, Mylène Jaccoud, Lise Montminy, Lisa Koperqualuk, Bibiane Courtois, Emmanuelle Walter, Irene Goodwin, Carole Brazeau, Nakuset, the Regroupement des centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec, the Saturviit Inuit Women’s Association and the Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association.
We thank the members of the Fédération des femmes du Québec for their help with organizing the launching of this report.
We thank all QNW staff members who, each in her own way, contributed to this investigation.
Finally, we wish to thank Indigenous women and their allies who struggle relentlessly for the protection and safety of our nations’ women.
Niá: wen!
~~~
Kuei
Nānīawig Māmawe Nīnawind… In November 2014, during Quebec Native Women’s annual conference, Laurie Odjick, mother of Maisy Odjick who has been missing since 2008, asked Indigenous organisations who speak up for missing & murdered Indigenous women to stand beside families rather than in front of them. Her wish became our inspiration; we decided to name our report “Stand With Us” in Laurie’s Anishinabe language.
Because family members are most directly affected by this issue, their participation was essential to the making of this investigation. Our hope was to provide them with a safe space, and to raise their voices. In the section dedicated to the family members’ gathering, you will read that by sharing their needs, the families presented us with a clear road to follow. Now it is up to each of us to take that path.
With this report, QNW introduces you to the existing situation in Quebec. Despite current assumptions, we are undoubtedly implicated in the issue of missing & murdered Indigenous women. It is important to address this issue and to try and understand what Indigenous people experience in this province. This report focuses on issues of violence, racism and discrimination, because looking at the phenomena of missing & murdered Indigenous women through this lens relates directly to QNW’s mission. Indigenous women continue to face colonial, sexist, patriarchal and intimate violence, to which we must put an end. To do this, we must all work together.
Recent events such as the Indigenous women in Val-d’Or courageously speaking out about the violence they experienced from police and the federal government’s national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls have instilled a sense of hope at QNW; indeed, collective awareness is growing. I am confident that we are finally going to make progress on the issues we have been speaking up about for so long. We hope that by reading this report, you will better understand what we as Indigenous women experience, and most of all, that you will feel the need to act, as we have been doing for the past forty years.
Ninashkumau Katipenitek ka minitak tshetshi umue minutaiat nitatusseunnan
President, Quebec Native Women
ILR5
