There are over 26,000 visits to our centre every year and the vast majority are Indigenous. Every day Indigenous women walk through our doors to find a safe space where they are agents of their own lives. We are keenly aware, however, that at the end of the day when we lock our doors, many of these women have nowhere else to go. We know that they often end up couch surfing in unsafe situations, staying with abusers, accessing shelters where they don’t feel safe, or just walking the streets. Action is needed so that no one else is added to the list of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

This is genocide and we see its ongoing and intergenerational effects on Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people every day in our centre. Their stories of poverty, marginalization, trauma, and lack of agency are symptoms of systemic oppression based on colonialism, racism, and gender. Human and Indigenous rights violations have a deep and tragic impact on the lives of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.

We support the National Inquiry into MMIWG’s Calls to Justice and the underlying theme that solutions must be strength-based, intersectional, and rooted in the foundational right to self-determination of Indigenous Peoples.

Since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Report, every July is Reconciliation Month at our centre. This year, we will commit to, and immediately begin implementing, the Calls to Justice of the National Inquiry Into MMIWG. Every day this month we will feature a different Call to Justice along with our plan to honour it. Follow along at #ReconciliationMonth on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But these 31 Calls are just the beginning of our work. We will release our full plan to address over 50 Calls to Justice by the end of July.

We are committed to confronting oppression in all its forms against Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We call on all levels of government to do the same, starting with recognizing colonialism in Canada as what it is: genocide.

Read the full report of the National Inquiry into MMIWG here.

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