Inquiry inequalities evident, says sister

Woman supports resigned MMIWG commissioner

The sister of a murdered Saskatchewan woman agrees with concerns of commissioner Marilyn Poitras, who resigned this week from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

“The processes they’ve set up, they’re following that established model, within the system there are systematic inequalities,” said Danielle Ewenin, whose sister Eleanor “Laney” Theresa Ewenin, was ejected from a vehicle and died from exposure in a field outside Calgary in February 1982. No one was ever charged.

The commission has excluded families of many victims by requiring them to approach the commission and file difficult-to-write accounts of their stories when they register, as well as failing to provide financial help for family members to attend rare information sessions because they’re called “citizens’ meetings,” not “family meetings,” Ewenin said.

“As Indigenous women, we get the brunt of those inequalities and it’s felt that the commissioners should be really sensitive to that. If they followed the ways we follow in our communities, then it would be responsive,” Ewenin said.

The concern echoes the words of Poitras’ resignation letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which she described her own hopes for the commission and her disappointment with it.

“I had imagined the chance to put Indigenous process first; to seek out and rely on Indigenous laws and protocols,” Poitras said.

“After serving on this Commission for the past 10 months, I realized the vision I hold is shared (by) very few within the National Inquiry — with the status quo colonial model of hearings is the path for most,” she wrote.

Poitras had also hoped, “to travel to as many places as possible: rural, urban, and remote — holding meetings in community halls and kitchen tables,” and to meet with incarcerated persons.

The commission released a list of nine community visits, including one in Saskatoon the week of Oct. 23, and two weeks of expert hearings in Winnipeg and Montreal.

Poitras is a Metis law professor from the University of Saskatchewan. Her resignation, effective July 15, follows the departure of the commission’s executive director Michele Moreau and three other staff members in recent months.