In this essay, Elizabeth Zarpa shares what justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people signifies for our relations with Earth and the natural world.
February 14 marks the 33rd annual Women’s Memorial March, when thousands of people will gather in cities across Turtle Island in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse (2SLGBTQQIA+) people. The historical and ongoing crisis of systemic violence against Indigenous women and girls is widely documented. It is deeply rooted in colonialism, in the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples of the territories they have inhabited and stewarded over millennia and in the environmental degradation and exploitation of their ancestral lands and waters.
In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls led to 231 “Calls for Justice.” The inquiry left no doubt as to the intimate link between extractive industries in Canada and systemic violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, in clearly stating that development projects and temporary industrial camps contribute to increased risks of physical and sexual violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people.
Call for Justice 13.4 called upon “the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to fund further inquiries and studies in order to better understand the relationship between resource extraction and other development projects and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.”
Elizabeth Zarpa, Inuk legal scholar and lawyer from the community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, participated in the inquiry as counsel for the national organization that represents Inuit in Canada, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. In this essay she shares what the Women’s Memorial March means to her and what justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people signifies for our relations with Earth and the natural world.
– Sabaa Khan, Director General (Québec & Atlantic), David Suzuki Foundation
On February 14, 2014, for the first time in my life I took part in the annual Women’s Memorial March in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside on the unceded xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Səlil̓wətaʔɬ territories. The experience changed my life.
The march started at the intersection of Main Street and East Hastings, near the local Friendship Centre. All participants gathered in a large circle at that intersection and the women began to drum and sing. As they sang and drummed, I looked up and there were many eagles circling us. I was amazed at the eagles, as they are powerful gifts from the Spirit World. I looked to another participant who expressed that this was a reoccurring phenomenon, at every annual Women’s Memorial March. The eagles showed up in the same way on the same day.
We began walking down the streets of the DTES shortly after in the hundreds. I had absolutely no idea what I would experience.
Violence against Indigenous people by the state, churches and police forms a major role in the colonial construct and history of this country.
As I walked, I saw, smelled and felt the unimaginable. Every so many steps in the DTES the march would come to a halt, and the Indigenous women would sing and drum their hearts out. We stopped more times than I could count throughout what felt like days. It was a pilgrimage into the deep dark realities, to which not many can relate, that exist within the streets, communities, hamlets and cities of this place called Canada. Within the small radius of the DTES, the poorest postal code in the country, hundreds of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people have passed into the Spirit World.
The annual Women’s Memorial March commemorates the spirts of people who have passed. What I didn’t realize was that the reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls would soon be an experience that I would become all too familiar with.
Unbeknown to me, my childhood best friend would be murdered on February 13, 2014. That likely explained a part of the reason why on February 14, 2014, in a Vancouver hostel, I was unable to sleep. Flashbacks of the smells, sounds, sights and feelings from marching and hearing the women sing and drum to the spirits of those who passed on, as we walked through the DTES, were burned into my memory. That night was the first of many when I would be unable to get any sleep because of what was to come next.
A nationwide search was underway shortly after February 14, 2014, for Loretta — Lorett was what I used to call her. She was missing. It was later found that she, along with her unborn child, were the victims of homicide by her two roommates.
At moments, it feels exhausting, redundant and sometimes retraumatizing to retell the stories of intergenerational harms created by colonial violence within Canada. But the reality of ongoing harms against Indigenous women and girls continues, and to address this reality, sharing these difficult truths must come to light.
What I came to realize through this horrible experience was that it is all too common within Indigenous communities that women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people endure this type of colonial violence. This country has a hidden history of violence against its Indigenous Peoples. Violence against Indigenous people by the state, churches and police forms a major role in the colonial construct and history of this country.
This was recently expressed in the final report of Kimberly Murray, the Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. The history of colonial violence is also well laid out in other public documents, notably, the Final Reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the Final Reports of the National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girl’s Inquiry.
At moments, it feels exhausting, redundant and sometimes retraumatizing to retell the stories of intergenerational harms created by colonial violence within Canada. But the reality of ongoing harms against Indigenous women and girls continues, and to address this reality, sharing these difficult truths must come to light. Within sectors of the Canadian economy these difficult realities are more prevalent than others, so much so that the National MMIWG Final Report has an entire section entitled “Resource Extraction and Violence Against Indigenous Women.”
This bountiful, big country is filled with natural resources and the economy and globalization demand its extraction. It’s a new wave of neo-colonialism that stares Indigenous people in the face today. It is the language, laws and power of natural resource extraction.
This section includes testimony from Indigenous women who share their lived experience regarding the violence, drugs and alcohol that come from “man camps,” created by natural resource extraction. The violence against Earth is inextricably connected to violence against Indigenous women and girls. The National MMIWG specifically addresses this in Calls to Justice 13. 1 to 13. 5.
These realities — which some Canadians conveniently deny with impunity — reflect the relevance and need for continued advocacy for justice through marches, reports, calls to action, calls to justice and further recommendations and commissions into the realities of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and S2LGBTQQIA+ people. This advocacy maintains the uncomfortable awareness that is required to address the social inequities perpetuated by systems of power rooted in the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The dispossession from our traditional and ancestral lands, our languages, culture, laws, communities, families — our ways of life and survival.
Colonization benefits from the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous people. The displacement of communities from their ancestral territories is not a new concept in the colonial construct of this country. First Nations were forced onto reserves by the Canadian government, and Inuit were forcefully relocated and resettled into foreign places because the government wanted to control a naturally nomadic people. This bountiful, big country is filled with natural resources and the economy and globalization demand its extraction. It’s a new wave of neo-colonialism that stares Indigenous people in the face today. It is the language, laws and power of natural resource extraction.
This extraction is inextricably connected to violence against Indigenous women and girls. Therefore, we march, write, read, pray, sing, gather, dance and advocate to commemorate those who have passed on and to continually work toward closing the socio-economic and environmental inequities that place Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people in vulnerable circumstances — even if it is emotionally draining, challenging and at moments, traumatizing work.
Not many Canadians have experienced or have been educated about the history and realities highlighted above, but somehow, some way, the eagles understand.
