Global Courant
This column is an op-ed by Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, president of the National Family and Survivors Circle, as part of CBC’s “Mother. Sister. Daughter,” a project tracking the progress of the National Inquiry’s 231 calls for justice into Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Read more from that research here.
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WARNING: This story contains disturbing details.
For decades, Indigenous families and survivors have approached law enforcement agencies across the country with our concerns about serial predators targeting our women, girls and gender diverse people.
This is supported by compelling and irrefutable evidence that Indigenous women experience much more violence than non-Indigenous people – which stems directly from unchecked racism and misogyny.
The rise in online hate, including white supremacist and misogyny, has led to a number of fatal and violent incidents around the world. It is clear that hatred can force people to act murderously. But not acknowledging hate as a motivating factor is even more damaging.
And without legal repercussions, we are confident that online hate will continue to grow and exacerbate the ongoing genocide against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ asexual) people.
However, individual and overt racism is only one factor in this genocide. We also need to look at how systemic and structural racism and misogyny entrenched in Canada’s colonial and patriarchal systems enable serial killers to repeatedly prey on Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people.
What makes us target? A system that shows time and time again that it will not exert enough political will or develop accountability mechanisms to protect us from harm.
Four years have passed since the publication of the 231 calls for justice
