March held for missing and murdered Indigenous women at Cabot Square

The Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal (NWSM) organized a march Tuesday evening to acknowledge the ongoing crisis of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit People across the country.

Drums and chanting could be heard in the streets of downtown Montreal as the community came together for the march.

“It’s really difficult for Indigenous people to always have to fight just to survive, to not be victimized. And we get victimized through the courts, through youth protection, through education, through like every institution,” said Na’kuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal. “And when we get targeted, it’s the police that are very slow to act, too.”

“For us to come together shows that we actually care about missing Indigenous women. We want the government to do more to implement change to the whole idea of systemic racism.”

Part of the goal for the march was to inform, educate, and raise awareness of the work community organizations are looking to do to eliminate the MMIWG2S+ crisis.

Montrealers march to acknowledge the ongoing crisis of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit People across the country.

“But the core issue is still ongoing and [Indigenous] women keep getting murdered,” said Na’kuset.

In a recent high-profile case in Manitoba, the remains of two Indigenous women murdered last May are thought to be located in a landfill North of Winnipeg. The search for Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran is currently on hold, possibly until April, pending a federally funded feasibility study.

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“MMIW is an ongoing issue that devastates communities and our hearts go out to the families of Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and the unidentified woman, known as Buffalo Woman (Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe). We hope that the federal government answers the outcry to search the landfill, hopefully beginning in April,” explained Na’kuset.

“Implement the recommendations,” Na’kuset urges. “You have the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada) where you have 94 recommendations and only I think maybe 15 have been implemented. You have the Viens Commission with 142. Apparently, 60 have been implemented, but that’s not enough. And now the 231 calls to justice, you add all those up, that’s a lot of recommendations. Why do we have to wait for all these recommendations?”

“We really want to just empower indigenous women and we feel like bringing people together and marching is part of the solution.”