By Lucas-Matthew Marsh
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Iori:wase
Mohawk Council of Kahnawake Chief Melanie Morrison was overcome with emotion last week at the unveiling of Quebec Native Women’s (QNW) latest project documenting the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S+) crisis in the province.
Before her stood a map, bearing the names of 124 women and Two-Spirit people, mothers, daughters, and sisters, like her own, whose lives were taken in the MMIWG2S+ crisis.
“To have actual hard data… to finally have something to prove what the families have been saying for decades,” Morrison said.
But less than a week later, the future of this project, and countless others like it, has been put into jeopardy.
QNW launched the map last week to track both resolved and ongoing MMIWG2S+ cases across the province, after years of working with advocates and community stakeholders. But hopes that the map’s findings would spur political action on the crisis were shattered by the federal government’s recent decision to sunset funding for several programs dedicated to addressing the crisis.
On Wednesday, Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, president of the National Family and Survivor Circle, Inc., said the federal government’s decision to end the programs came without any official notice.
“We continue to see a troubling pattern of ongoing, inequitable and inconsistent funding cycles,” Anderson-Pyrz said. “Today, our right to life is threatened by the lack of political will.”
The sunset of these programs run by Giganawenimaanaanig, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak and the Native Women’s Association of Canada relate to budget cuts made to both Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada in the 2025 federal budget. The National Family and Survivor Circle alone estimate it will lose $840,000 in annual funding starting March 31.
Josie Nepinak, President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, argued that the sunsetting of these programs sends a message that the federal government’s commitment to addressing the crisis was temporary.
“In reality, the need has never been more urgent,” Nepinak said. “The calls for justice were not recommendations; they are legal obligations.”
To date, both the federal and provincial governments have only implemented two of the original 231 Calls for Justice outlined by the National Inquiry final report.
“My sister’s story is not unique,” Morrison stressed. “When there are no answers, the trauma does not end.”
(File Photo)