The final report from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry will officially deliver its final report to the federal government this morning and yesterday I included the outcome in the Prayers of the People as I led worship. No doubt many other congregations prayed as well because the United Church has been deeply involved in the process of reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples in Canada for decades. The MMIWG report is already stirring up controversy because it uses the word "genocide" to describe what has transpired for Indigenous women since the fur trade, through the Indian Act, and Residential Schools and more recently the sex trade. We know that thousands of women and girls have gone missing and many were murdered. But genocide isn't always defined as mass murder, which we associate with the Holocaust/Shoah or Rwanda.
A definition created 75 years ago in response to the Nazi extermination of Jews gives us a broader definition:
By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups….
Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish jurist (Axis Rule in Occupied Europe 1944)
This comes disturbingly close to home and while some are dismissing the use of the term genocide it applies to so much of what has happened over centuries in Canada. There are many recommendations in the report to government, the police and the larger Canadian public to help address endemic levels of violence directed at Indigenous women and girls, as well as LGBTQ persons.
Yesterday, following worship, a couple of women commented on how little they had known about the violence against Indigenous women and that they hoped that the report wouldn't be shelved or recommendations ignored. I would certainly agree and was heartened to hear their concerns.
Our prayers and action really must continue as a denomination committed to God's justice in our country.
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