Seven years on, MMIWG inaction is painful, advocates say

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“It began at the grassroots level. It began through the Sisters in Spirit vigils (led by Tolley) that were happening all across Canada, and it began from Indigenous women wanting change and calling for an inquiry. So, this has been a longstanding issue,” she says.

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In 2020, ONWA released a report detailing critical recommendations that were to be integrated into the national plan to address violence against Indigenous women and girls.

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Among the many suggestions is placing the safety of Indigenous women at the centre of the action, addressing the many forms of violence that Indigenous women and girls disproportionately face, investing in education and accountability.

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“What that looks like, is that we’re not included in decision making, we’re not included in public policy engagements. We know that good public policy comes from when everybody is included,” McGuire Cyrette says.

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Bridget Tolley poses for a photo in Gatineau. Tolley is an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls after the Quebec police killed her mother 25 years ago. Seven years after the final report of the national inquiry into MMIWG and no action, Tolley says it’s not a priority for the government. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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Tolley says accountability has been a struggle in every way, noting that it was especially difficult to obtain the report of her mother’s death. She finally got access in 2003 after paying a lawyer $1000.

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It named alcohol as the first factor leading the death, and pedestrian negligence as the second. 

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The fact that her mother was struck by a moving vehicle on the highway was written much later, and much quieter in the report. 

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“My mother did drink. My mother lost her mother in 1998 and then she lost her baby sister a few months after, and then she lost her husband a year later, so she lost three of her family members within two years, and she was really hurt,” Tolley says.  

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But that’s not why she died, Tolley says. It didn’t seem to matter much, because the case was closed three months later. 

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Looking further into the report, Tolley noticed more issues. 

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“This is when I found out everything, I found out the brother of the cop that struck my mother was in charge of the case,” she says, adding that a coroner was never called to see her mother’s body. 

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“I believe this is why nobody wanted to contact me or let me know anything about it, and you only have three years to sue the police if anything like this happens, so this is what I figured, that they were trying to stall us, so we wouldn’t sue them. And I mean to never talk about this case for 20 years? Come on, there’s something very wrong,” Tolley says. 

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Audrey DeMarsico, a lawyer at Nelligan Law who specializes in local Indigenous communities, confirms that three years is the deadline to bring a lawsuit of this kind forward in Quebec.

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Turning to advocacy

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After seeing the mishandling of her mother’s death, Tolley says she became an advocate for the justice of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. But at first, she wasn’t sure she could do it. 

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“I only have a Grade 9 education, and I told that to everybody, but I know right and wrong, and I know common sense. I was very, very scared. I kept asking myself, ‘Are you crazy? You still want to do this?’ But I had to do it. I had to do it for true accountability and justice, for my mom, for all our other missing and murdered Indigenous women,” says Tolley.  

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In the decades that followed, as Tolley built her advocacy and founded a volunteer and support program, the Families of Sisters in Spirit, she noticed patterns. Investigations would close quickly and without seeking information from communities. 

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Tolley says that in the 20 years she’s been seeking justice on Parliament Hill, not much has changed, except for the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women.