Dear Editor
I would like to submit a letter regarding the Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women’s Inquiry.
As a Ktunaxa taxpayer in Canada, I have lived and overcame some of the challenges that my people face every day, including poverty, addiction, discrimination, etc. I raised my two sons without child support payments from their mother. I also hold two university degrees – one being a law degree. I graduated from UBC law school one year after our Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Ribald. Our Attorney General of Canada, being Aboriginal herself, showed us all that Aboriginal people belong in Canada’s top political brass, too. She helped set the terms and conditions of the upcoming Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women’s Inquiry.
But, I truly wonder if this Inquiry is really going to be any different from that of Wally Oppal’s BC Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women’s Inquiry. Will the recommendation from this inquiry sit on the shelf next to all of the other past recommendations on Aboriginal people? Will the $50 million being spent on this inquiry give us more than a foregone conclusion? And, since this inquiry is looking at root problems, why aren’t we placing any focus on Aboriginal chiefs and band councils? They too have some explaining to do and, no doubt, some apologies to give to these murdered and missing Aboriginal women and their families.
A chief and band council’s apathy, discrimination and lateral violence towards some of their people happens everyday in Canada – I lived and overcame that, too. So I would bet the entire $50 million that some of the murdered and missing Aboriginal women had issues with their own chief and band council, and that should be the starting point of this inquiry.
Robert W. Louie
Creston