Vigil calls for more government action to reduce violence against Indigenous women

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The government must do more to reduce violence against Indigenous women, advocates said Friday at a Sisters in Spirit Vigil on Parliament Hill to commemorate missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people.

This marks 20 years since Amnesty International published its Stolen Sisters Report, which argued that poor record keeping made it impossible to accurately quantify the disproportionate levels of violence Indigenous Canadian women experience.

"We've been asking for truth, accountability and justice here on Parliament Hill for 20 years. I think this is enough," event organizer Bridget Tolley told a crowd of about 100 people.

"What happened to the first recommendations we had 20 years ago with the Stolen Sisters report? How many recommendations have we had since? How many have been done? Why are we still here asking for the same things we asked for 20 years ago?"

Five years after a three-year national inquiry released a landmark report into violence against Indigenous women, few of its 231 calls for justice have been addressed. That report highlighted that the homicide rate among Indigenous women is nearly six times higher than for non-Indigenous women.

After speaking, Tolley had her braid cut as an act of mourning and the hair ceremonially burned in a pan with sacred medicines.


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