Manitoba’s put aside Oct 4th as a day to honor missing & murdered indigenous women. When the day rolled around Winnipeg’s mayor had this to say.
I checked out his link to see what my city had actually done with those calls for justice and read this.
On June 11, 2019, the Executive Policy Committee (EPC) directed the Winnipeg Public Service to review the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG2S+) to identify how the City of Winnipeg can respond to the Calls for Justice that are within the City’s jurisdiction, and report back with its review and recommendations that can be achieved within existing City of Winnipeg budgets.
Calls for justice are important enough to read but not important enough to fund, gotcha. They went on.
To show our commitment to and progress on the MMIWG Calls for Justice and to enhance the opportunities for our Accord partners to further participate in reconciliation, the City of Winnipeg is now including the MMIWG Calls for Justice in the Accord commitment and reporting process.
Ok, so in 2019 they studied the calls to justice and made a list of what could be achieved without spending a dime. Then in 2020 they decided to begin writing reports on their progress. Underwhelming to say the least.
Fast forward five or six days later our police Tweeted these out.
Please click here then share to your social media, for Brenda. Thank you.
Another missing indigenous woman. Maybe another murdered indigenous woman. Looking to vent I went back to that link the mayor’s tweeted and dug into those reports. One of the calls for justice that caught my eye the first time I read them was this one.
You’d think that would be a good place for our city’s police to start if they were serious. Given that indigenous women are going missing then turning up dead on a regular basis actually enforcing those restraining orders seems like a no brainer.
Looked up the Winnipeg Indigenous Accord report to see if ramping up that enforcement was something they put into place. Nope, it wasn’t mentioned. In their section of the report the police patted themselves on the back over a liaison officer they hired 20 years ago and then went on to list a bunch of awareness training as accomplishments.
That’s all fine and well but I doubt it was any help to Brenda Guimond.
Considering the city are mishandling everything I see them try to do, why was I so shocked that they are mishandling the MMIWG Calls for Justice? I’ve often said sitting around waiting for the government to make your life better will ensure nothing changes.
If I wouldn’t wait around for the government to make my life better why am I waiting around for the government to make their lives better. That was a hard question to answer because it involved a hard truth to face.
Holding our civic, provincial & federal leaders to account is important but I was letting it be a substitute for doing something to address the problem myself.
Most of the calls for justice were directed towards goverments of all levels and I could easily apply them to our broken system. But what about the ones that apply to me personally?
Holding governments accountable is at the bottom of this list. It’s important work but I’d tricked myself into thinking it’s an end in itself.
We have some big systemic problems up here in Canada. Our big systemic problems will take big changes to overcome. Big changes won’t be brought in by big governments.
When a majority of Canadians, by their day to day activities, are showing they don’t give a rip about MMIWG nothing our government does will be able to change a thing.
When a majority of Canadians, by their day to day activities, are showing they care deeply about MMIWG nothing our government fails to do will be able to prevent things from changing.
Call out our leaders by all means but don’t let that be a substitute for looking inward.
