The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW) was in Smithers last week as part of its cross-country series of hearings.
Chief commissioner Marion Buller noted some themes in the needs listed by family members who spoke of their lost loved ones at the hearings.
“We also heard great recommendations for safe transportation up here in this part of British Columbia, for safe housing, and also for transition houses for women and children. We also heard about the need for responsive policing … We also heard recommendations for improved counselling and support services for families who have lost loved ones,” Buller told those gathered for the second day of hearings last Wednesday.
Smithers was the second of nine places so far announced as communities the inquiry is visiting across Canada, and the first since it delayed hearings to change how it prepared families ahead of time. The first was held May 30 to June 1 in Whitehorse. Since then more preparation, including from legal and mental health workers, has been added to visits prior to the hearings.
Buller, commissioner Michèle Audette and others involved in the inquiry participated in a walk into Smithers Monday evening which started the week prior in Prince Rupert. That was followed by the lighting of the sacred fire that burned through the three days of hearings, a water ceremony and a brushing off ceremony for families of the murdered and missing women.
Stories from the families
The inquiry heard from 27 families at the public hearings in Smithers, plus 12 more in private.
The stories were of loss and hope, injustice and resilience. They weighed heavy on the heart for anyone who sat through the three days inside the Dze L K’ant Friendship Centre. Boxes of tissues with paper bags set out to collect the tears were used throughout the stories of mothers, sisters and daughters lost.
The community hearings started on Tuesday morning. Chief Timberwolf welcomed the commissioners onto the territory and Molly Wickham sang the Wet’suwet’en women’s water song. She said she sang it to start the hearings off on a positive note.
“[I wanted] to offer that strength and medicine, I believe our songs are powerful and can help us through hard times and to celebrate,” she said. “I thought it was important to share a song from this territory that we are on.”
Destiny
Wet’suwet’en First Nation Chief Vivian Tom shared her story. She spoke about losing her daughter in 2013 and what led up to her murder.
Tom’s daughter Destiny was only 21 when her abusive boyfriend killed her. Tom told the commission her and her husband thought about suicide or turning to alcohol to end their pain but decided that raising Destiny’s baby was more important. Tom said the toughest part of losing her daughter was seeing her body in the mud and snow under a tarp and the police not letting her go under the crime scene tape to hug her daughter one last time. Tom said there weren’t enough resources to help her daughter get clean and get away from her baby’s father, despite him being charged twice after assaulting her.
Because of time constraints the next two sessions ran simultaneously in two different places. One of Doreen Jack’s family members, a victim of the Highway of Tears, spoke in one room of the Northwest Community College beside the hall, and the family of Tamara Chipman’s, a missing Prince Rupert woman, continued in the friendship hall.