Imagine my confusion. I’m driving to school for my 8:30 a.m. class, and the coffee just isn’t waking me up. Then on the radio I hear that since 1980 more than 1,100 Aboriginal women have been murdered or have gone missing in Canada, yet Stephen Harper refuses to call for a federal inquiry. Now I’m awake.
I kept thinking about this all day, and then my wakefulness turned to anger when I learned that a memorial to the victims of communism is in the works.
Apparently the main inspiration comes from Stephen Harper, says Tribute to Liberty’s chair, Ludwik Klimkowski, and I just can’t help but see blatant hypocrisy.
Klimkowski explained the funding will come from three government departments and will be funded to a total of 4 million federal dollars.
So in other words, we can fund a memorial to victims of communism—whose victimization was not originated on our soil—but we cannot fund a federal inquiry for the staggering amount of murders of our Aboriginal women? Don’t get me wrong—I do respect what victims of communism have done for this country through their hard work, but Canada itself has never been under the threat of totalitarian communism.
However, Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples were here first, that’s the whole point of the term “Aboriginal.” We’re going to drop a lot of money on a memorial for a foreign political structure but not further investigate the alarming rate of murders of first nations women in our own backyard?
Harper says the matter has been sufficiently handled and he would prefer to study the underlying crimes. Underlying crimes like segregation, which leads to poverty and addiction? Those underlying crimes?
The memorial is to be built on Wellington Street, where you can still clearly see the victims of the Aboriginal’s shattered culture walking the streets today, as approximately 13,000 Aboriginal people live in Ottawa. It seems like a slap in the face.
Aboriginal Canadians are undoubtedly one of the groups that have felt the horrors of capitalism the most, but where is their memorial? There isn’t one, and every year more innocent women are in need of a memorial.
Better yet, we need to thwart the causes of these women needing a memorial. But how many needless deaths and kidnappings are necessary? The RCMP and the UN seem to think the number is high enough, as both groups have strongly urged Stephen Harper to make this rising epidemic a federal inquiry.
Harper assures us that the issue of Aboriginal women is getting better, but seeing as since 1980, the proportion of Aboriginal victims has been increasing, including the high profile murder of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, I really don’t get the impression of improvement.
I understand tackling the underlying issues of this tragic problem is a hard one, and would take generations of backtracking and making amends. I know this is cliché, but isn’t the hard thing and the right thing often synonymous?
Building a memorial is easy, and last time I checked there aren’t too many communism-related deaths happening in Canada. It’s time to put Canada’s priorities in check.
