Sarah Mills: Teachers deserve gratitude as school year wraps up
There's a collective sigh coming from Saskatchewan's teachers as the school year ends. Sarah Mills says teachers are ask...
The national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its final report Monday.
The report included was based on almost three years of work and described violence against Indigenous women, girls and LGBTQ people as “genocide.”
Speaking Monday on Gormley with guest host Drew Remenda, University of Saskatchewan Indigenous Studies professor Robert Innes said the use of the term “genocide” was appropriate.
“The use of that term is going to obviously cause a lot of apprehension and maybe consternation from a lot of Canadians, but it is the right term as laid out by the UN Convention on Genocide,” Innes said.
Innes said a number of policies of the Canadian government over the years would also fit the definition and that the sum total of these policies has been a major contributor to the current living conditions of many Indigenous people.
“For many, it could be kind of challenging to come to grips with the history of Indigenous-Canadian relations in this country,” he said.
With the report containing well over 200 recommendations directed at a number of agencies, Innes said he didn’t think the scope had become too broad. Rather, he said the recommendations had to cover a lot of areas in order to address the issue.
“It really does lay the groundwork,” he said. “The issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women and two-spirit people is very complex.”
Innes said he had high hopes that the report would be something that people and government would engage with and actually move to implement the recommendations, rather than shelving them as has been done with past reports on Indigenous issues.
