Montrealers rally to honour missing and murdered Indigenous lives
Posted May 5, 2025 4:18 pm.
Last Updated May 5, 2025 10:43 pm.
Montrealers came together for a rally at Cabot Square on Monday night to honour Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit People.
Across Canada, these groups continue to face violence at higher rates. According to Statistics Canada, the homicide rate among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women and girls is six times higher than for their non-Indigenous counterparts.
“I really hope that people can come away from today understanding that we all have a responsibility and a role to play in changing in changing the face of this issue,” said Simone Page, project coordinator with the Iskweu Project.
“This weekend will be the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Only 11 of the 94 calls to action have been acted upon, and of the National Inquiry of the 231 calls to action in the last six years, only two have been completed, so I think those numbers are dismal.”
Monday’s gathering began with words from elders and featured testimonies from family members and loved ones —all to give a name and a face to the daughters, sisters, aunts, mothers, and friends who have been lost.
“There’s many things the citizen of Montreal maybe think they don’t have power. They do have power. They do have that chance to walk beside us, not for us, but beside us, to support an organization, to support a movement, to support many places that we want to, you know, give dignity and humanize the people that we dehumanize for too long. So there’s many things that one or many people from Montreal can do,” said Michele Audette, Senator & former commissioner of the National Inquiry into MMIWG.
Even though the numbers remain low, former Commissioner of National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Michèle Audette. says the work has sparked other kinds of progress beyond the official numbers.
“If we look in Quebec, there is a legislation now with the Assemblée Nationale that can permit family who lost a baby at the hospital in the 60s, 70s and 80s where they are buried, why or how they died. So it’s more than 200 little spirits that they can say I was here for all those years. Even some of them were stolen and sold, but they have answer,” said Audette.
