Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank Mr. Hawkins for bringing this motion to the floor today.
I really thought about this motion for some time. When I went back to Tulita and I thought about this, I had kind of a sad feeling and a sick feeling because one of the people that we’re talking about
in the Northwest Territories is a family member of mine here in Yellowknife who was killed and still today we don’t know what happened. The family doesn’t know what happened.
So, before I could say anything, I had to sit down with the father and it was very, very scary because you don’t know what the father will say or what will come out in conversation, because I wanted to do this. I had some time with the father and I said, this is what we’re planning to do and I might talk about cousins and daughters, and the father said, with tears in his eyes, he said, “Be good.” I said, “Well, how is it you’re dealing with this?” “Every night,” he says, “I keep waiting for her to come home. I still don’t know what happened and the RCMP are not really keeping me up to date, so I don’t know.” So, I’m sitting there and he’s sitting there, and I can imagine the father sitting there every night going to bed wondering what happened to his daughter. That, Mr. Speaker, really put a sense of how real this issue is.
These are people in our communities, people we may have known, friends you have who have known these people. These are real people and it’s happened right across Canada. No territory has been untouched by this issue, from the Far North to the east coast to the west coast to the southern borders of Canada or worldwide.
Mr. Speaker, I’ve tabled a bunch of support letters from grand chiefs, Metis presidents, women’s organizations and associations, even the Public Health Association of Canada saying we’ve got to do something. So there’s a call. There’s a lonely, lonely call being gathered in Canada, making one strong voice, saying we need to know why, we need to look at this.
The Northwest Territories has always been trailbreakers, and there’s no exception here with our Premier taking the lead in the roundtable, a trailbreaker. A true northern Aboriginal trailbreaker. We deal with the wilderness and you break trail. We did it with the birthplace of ice hockey. We did it with residential schools. There are many more, if you check history and the Hansard of this government, trail-breaking, and it’s not a glorified, easy task. It’s a tough task. But you know what? We’re a tough government, and it’s for that I stand behind this Premier on these issues here. He has my full support sitting at that roundtable, getting the people together, saying okay, we have an issue here. That is important because when the Premier sits, he looks across and says, yes, someone’s been touched in the Northwest Territories, in this Assembly.
So I urge the Premier to push on with this urgent issue. Push on, don’t give up, Bob. I’m sorry, Mr. Premier.
The motion talks about 47 of the 50 women that have been murdered in the Northwest Territories
over the past 32 years. While we realize a majority of the missing and murdered population are Aboriginal, it touches everybody, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal because they’ve got friends too and they may have partners. This cannot continue. It tears at the cultural fabric of our communities and our regions. Not one region has been left untouched from this tragedy.
I want to thank again the Member for Yellowknife Centre for working with me on this motion. It shows that if we believe something, we’ll gladly say whatever we need to say in whatever means you have to do it, public statements, Member’s statements or the media because it gives people hope, hope that we as Members of the Legislative Assembly, the lawmakers of the Northwest Territories, are listening and want to do something about this. We have heard the call, find out what’s happening to the Aboriginal women, why are they missing, why are they being murdered. This is not okay in Canada, this is not okay in the Northwest Territories.
No gender is more revered than our female Aboriginal women. They are the givers of our children, grandchildren, our family, but somehow that’s been lost. This is not about gender against gender or one creed versus another; this is about humanity. This is about who we are as legislators, bringing the humanity back into government and saying that you matter.
I also wanted to say mahsi cho to the Native Women’s Association of Canada. I want to say mahsi to Ms. Pauline Roach from Deline, who is also president of the Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories, and her executive director. Also, mahsi to Ms. Villebrun who sits on the Assembly of First Nation Women’s committee. Hats off to Ms. Lorraine Phaneuf and her board, sorry if I’ve said your last name incorrectly, at the Status of Women Council of the Northwest Territories, also the Sisters in Spirit movement and the Walking with our Sisters community groups from across Canada. They are the ones who are really leading the charge.
Just think if it wasn’t for our women, or our mothers, our aunties, grandmothers, we would not be here. No wonder we call it Mother Earth and Father Sun. As I said, I’ve personally been affected by it, my mother has been affected by it. My mother’s older sister was murdered in Edmonton a long, long time ago and they haven’t found the person to this day. So it not only happened a couple of years ago, it happened a long, long time ago. My mom is way over 70.
Like I said, I want to thank the honourable Premier Bob McLeod for assuming the lead on this issue at the Council of the Federation. The Premiers from across the land, I urge you strongly not to give up, keep rallying for this roundtable to be built, to be
seated and to know that the women out there, the ones who are missing, they will be heard and there will be action and there will be accountability on all levels of government. We as Aboriginal people have always survived. Grandfathers, ancestors, thousands of years. We are survivors and adaptors and I can attest to this by surviving the residential schools. It won’t ever put us down, but we learn from it. Policies that were outdated, this cannot continue.
We’re from the true north, strong and free and we’re all northern people. It’s time again to honour and respect the important role that women have in our communities, in our homes and our respective nations haven’t forgotten our pasts. How did we get to the point that 1,017 Aboriginal women were murdered in our country and 164 and counting are still missing? Is our justice system broken? Are we not important to the police? No, not really. It’s time to break the cycle of abuse, time to stop the neglect and take action.
Let us pray with the families of the murdered and missing. Honour these women. Don’t pity them.
We have a complicated series of traditions. Whether they’re Dene, Inuvialuit, English, Metis or French, we’re all human. Let us stand together in this House again. Let us show our families, our wives, our partners, our mothers, our grandmothers, daughters, nieces and cousins the power of love and hope we have for them; more important, the ones yet to be born, that society has changed because we made a difference today, we stood as one. Let us show them that we love them, we care and we’re going to stand up to discrimination, to violence and to end this cycle. The time is now. Mahsi cho. Thank you.