What Indigenous Torontonians are Expecting from the Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women

The hopes and fears of three members of Indigenous communities.

By Roxy Kirshenbaum

Earlier this month, Canadian federal ministers announced that an inquiry into the country’s murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls would officially commence in September. The investigation, completed independent of the government, will cost $53.8 million and span more than two years.

It is a critical step forward for many Indigenous Canadians, who have fought for an inquiry for years. The inquiry is especially significant to those in Toronto, a city with one of the largest Indigenous populations in Canada.

Here, three Indigenous Torontonians share their thoughts, feelings, and worries about the inquiry.

Maggie Cywink

Maggie Cywink. Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

It’s been both a challenging and a fascinating journey for Maggie Cywink, 54, who is from Whitefish River First Nation in Manitoulin District, Ontario. When her sister Sonya was murdered in August of 1994 at 31 years old, Cywink wanted answers. Although the case remains unsolved to this day, her hope to find her sister’s killer and the details surrounding the tragedy has slowly dwindled. “I’ve come to a place in my life where I accept that it may never be solved,” she says. “I want my sister’s murder solved, yes, that would be wonderful, but I also accept the fact that chances are slim right now. It’s been almost 23 years and I’m thinking that whoever did this to her is possibly dead, so, the truth may never come out.”

Though the independent national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls promises to provide answers, solutions, and solace to Indigenous communities after decades of violence and injustice, many people aren’t so sure.

“What the majority of families really wanted was to open the cases to find our women who are missing, but we understand now that that’s not going to happen,” Cywink says. “Many families are disillusioned and disappointed; there is a sense of hopelessness.” While families are likely looking at this initiative as something that will potentially do a lot of good, they’re not convinced it will.

“I think that the inquiry is going to be really difficult for a lot of families,” Cywink says. “They’ve got to prepare themselves somehow to understand that here is this possibility of failure. They may never get the answers they’re looking for.” Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

ON HER SISTER’S DEATH: “How I’m coping with my sister’s death is acceptance. I’ve come to a place where it’s clear to me that I can do no good by being an angry individual and being resentful and being hateful, that is not going to solve anything—it’s not going to help me and it’s not going to help the women who need our guidance, our support. So that’s number one for me.”

PREPARING FOR THE INQUIRY: “We have to prepare ourselves mentally, spiritually, and emotionally for the change that we’re about to go through in the next two or three years, because after it’s all said and done, there will still be the impact of what experiences we’re going to be having and we need to have those counsellors and mental health care workers in place to help the families.

“We also need to think about how our men are going to be involved in this. How are they going to be a part of the healing process? We need to be complete. This is only about women, but men are the other side of that. So how do we bridge that connection between the men and the women and make it a healthy change and a healthy transition for everybody? We need their guidance and we need their protection.”

“I went to the site where my sister was murdered and part of my healing journey is to find ways to connect with her spirit, so what I did was in August of 2014, my friend and I went to the exact tree where Sonya had been found and I laid down on the ground with my camera and shot [a photo] upward into the sky. My feeling was that I was thinking about her spirit going into the sky when it was leaving her and that was sort of a comforting feeling for me.” Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

HER HOPES FOR THE INQUIRY: “What I would like to see happen is to see the numbers for the missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women go down to an acceptable level, a level that is consistent with the ratio of the number of First Nations women in this country. It’s never going to go away. I think we’re never going to eliminate disappearances and murders of our women and girls; however, we have to get it to the point where we’re preventing or putting programs in place that are preventing the violence that is taking the lives of our women and girls.”

Cheryllee Bourgeois

Cheryllee Bourgeois poses by an American Sycamore ribbon tree. It’s one of the largest indigenous trees of Ontario. It was brought to the Toronto Birth Centre to celebrate all the new babies that have been and will be born there. Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

Cheryllee Bourgeois, 38, is a registered midwife at Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto, a practice that focuses on serving the city’s urban Indigenous community. Bourgeois, along with her colleagues, provides care throughout pregnancy, labour, birth, and the first six weeks postpartum. Bourgeois is also Cree-Métis.

“When I was growing up, I always knew that I wanted to work with my community, and I didn’t know how. I wanted to work in women’s health, but I didn’t have a picture of what that meant,” she says. “I met somebody who was having a midwife at her birth and I didn’t even realize that it was a job, so once I heard about it, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do.’ It was really clear.”

“It’s hard living as an Indigenous person and having faith in the institutions of government and bureaucracy that they’re going to come out with real change.” Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

In working with Indigenous families at the Toronto Birth Centre, Bourgeois has seen a lot of wonderful moments, such as the births of happy, healthy babies. But she’s been exposed to some terrible things as well. “We have past clients who are missing,” she says. “I can think of a birth that I went to with one of my clients who had an amazing friend come and support her there. We were there for hours together at her birth and it was three days postpartum that she was murdered.”

Even when life goes on and is business as usual, the question of what’s next is always on Bourgeois’s mind.

“We know that it’s never far away from the folks who we’re seeing in our offices who we’re supporting during this huge transformational time.”

WHAT SHE WANTS TO SEE: “I would really like to see some real inward gazing on the government’s part and from institutions in society because they state in the mandate that they’re looking at systemic problems, and I think that a lot of systemic problems are so deeply embedded in policy and procedure.

“The way that the government approaches and engages with Indigenous communities is very interesting and that needs to be looked at. It needs to be taken apart and examined.”

Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

ON THE HISTORY: “You see it in the media a lot more and the outrage and the surprise of this going on, but Indigenous people have known this has been going on for years. We know that this is a problem, we know this is a reality, but it’s interesting to watch different faces of society engage with that kind of knowledge for the first time and be surprised and struggle with it.”

HER HOPES FOR THE INQUIRY: “Is the process actually going to make a meaningful, lasting change? I don’t know and I’m not depending on it to do that, but I understand that it needs to happen and that it’s going to happen.”

Evan Smith

Evan Smith. Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

Reverend Evan Smith, 36, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada. She works for the Toronto Urban Ministry, a shared ministry between the Anglican and the United Church. Her job runs the gamut from street outreach and community-based pastoral care to worship services, including funerals and weddings.

She spent years working in youth shelters doing street outreach in secular organizations, but felt that spirituality was missing in her work and it needed to be integrated for more holistic healing. “We can’t make good decisions for our lives, any of us, unless we’re connected to a spiritual path and into some sort of cultural support,” she says.

Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

But it wasn’t just Smith’s social work background that made her so good at her job. Not only is she an Indigenous woman who can personally relate to her community’s struggles, but she was also involved in the sex trade by choice for more than a decade. “I’m really lucky because I’m able to use my voice to talk about the rights of women in sex work and to really meet women where they’re at and say, ‘Hey, I know what you’re going through, I’ve been there, too; let me help you work safely, or let me help you exit if that’s what you’re choosing to do.’”

Reverend Smith echoes the familiar sentiments of many profoundly affected Indigenous women in thinking that the inquiry may be too little too late. But she’s hopeful that the causes of violence will be deeply assessed. “I’m happy [the inquiry] is happening, I’m glad there was consultation with families beforehand,” she says. “I’m really hoping that it will get to the roots of the problem, which is not necessarily just violence against Indigenous women, but colonization, racism, land treaties, food access— all of those things combined create an atmosphere where violence becomes a real problem.”

WHY TORONTO MATTERS: “In Toronto right now we have more Indigenous people living here than on all reserves in Ontario combined. I think the community isn’t as visible as maybe Vancouver’s Downtown East Side or definitely the north end of Winnipeg, but we do have a huge urban Aboriginal population here and I think it’s largely overlooked.”

“If people in our own communities were standing up and saying, ‘Enough is enough, we’re not going to put up with this’ [it] would look a lot different,” she says. “But I think that with lateral violence and intergenerational trauma, it’s a large hole that we’re in.” Photo by Roxy Kirshenbaum.

ON STIGMA: “I think that there’s not enough awareness. There’s still a lot of stigma around Indigenous people. I think that for a long time the inquiry didn’t happen or there wasn’t as much awareness raised because it was assumed that all these women were sex workers and I think that really speaks to the stigma that we have around women who are in the sex trade by choice or by force. I think that there’s so much wrapped in it that it’s really hard to understand what causes the violence in our communities.”

HER HOPES FOR THE INQUIRY: “Cases definitely need to be opened and re-examined because I think a lot of things were probably missed. I think that politically and culturally things are just different in the community and landscape right now. Anything that raises awareness around the situation of women and girls in our communities is good; hopefully there will be some answers that come out for families from the inquiry. I don’t know how effective it’s going to be, but I certainly think that something is better than nothing.”