Public probe looks like a cynical exercise

Design of aboriginal inquiry badly flawed, writes Dr. Richard Thatcher.

The federal initiative to undertake a public inquiry into the problem of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada appears to be hellbent on a road paved with good intentions — an inquiry producing a report with virtually no new findings that will gather dust on library shelves and be read by no one except students writing papers.

Or are there really good intentions in this business?

Sadly, at least at first glance, one cannot help but wonder if legislators who decided to proceed with the inquiry had intentions that were cynical at best: an initiative better seen as an attempt to scratch a (political) itch and soothe the complainants than a serious identification of causes and scientifically plausible solutions. The problem begins with the selection of commissioners.

To a person, the commissioners were selected on the basis of their legal or administrative backgrounds and their career attachment to aboriginal organizations and the interests those organizations represent.

Nothing wrong with these characteristics, but there is something very wrong indeed about completely ignoring the inclusion of research expertise.

The inquiry does seem to give an opportunity for many grieving and well-meaning people to air their grievances about the failure of police and social service personnel to attend to the needs of vulnerable aboriginal women with the vigilance they would with a non-aboriginal (and, in some instances, a far less stigmatized) population of actual or potential victims. One would be heartless to disagree with the accommodation offered by these hearings.

There is also a fatal flaw in the design of the inquiry, however: It does not call for a serious, empirical study of the probable risks that so frequently place aboriginal women in the tragic ranks of the missing and murdered population.

Without facts and wellresearched solutions, the inquiry can be little more than a sop to political demands.

After an admittedly superficial and preliminary examination of the terms of reference, I fear the inquiry will gather a potpourri of aboriginal accusations (and sympathetic but uninformed non-aboriginal sympathizers) directed at the already frequently demonstrated flaws and biases of police, judges and social workers, and very little about the malfunctioning of exceptional numbers of aboriginal families, substance abuse and community economic dysfunction that encourages rather than discourages abused or neglected young women from fleeing, alone, on lonely highways, to the mean and hostile streets of distant cities.

There is expertise available to carefully study these risks and that expertise is to be found in the fields of sociology, criminology, psychology, indigenous studies, social work and economics. It is true that this work must be “culturally sensitive” and there are ways to reinforce this, including the involvement of aboriginal people with these credentials. It must also be recognized that any of the social scientists worth their salt and appropriate for selection are, by conviction, culturally sensitive.

They may never fully meet an ideal standard in this regard, but the methodology they employ is light years beyond most of the predictable voices of interest group complainants that are drawn to the forums of the typical public inquiry.

I should add that I am more than sympathetic with the idea that the families of missing and murdered women should be given a chance to express their grief and make their complaints about police known. What I don’t agree with is letting the process of hearing their concerns be placed at the centre of the inquiry’s data collection process.

There can be little doubt that the segregation and semi-colonization of aboriginal peoples has resulted in a backdrop of conditions that invite all shades of social pathology, including a culture of violence that may be at the centre of the “missing and murdered” problem. It is how to overcome that tragic legacy in the undertaking of present changes and solutions that must be emphasized. Those solutions lie with parents, families and aboriginal leadership, as well as police and social services and provincial and national policy-makers, if this complex and deeply seated problem is to be overcome. To identify both causes and effective remediation, a well-grounded empirical study of a multi-dimensional nature is essential.