Loved ones still waiting for task force to investigate MMIWG cases

Val Charlette wonders if her daughter's death would have been deemed suspicious if an Indigenous-led task force had been called in to investigate.

Angela Lavallee wonders if a task force would have determined someone was responsible for the death of her infant granddaughter.

Destiny Paupanakis wonders if the case of her sister's death would have been reopened as a murder investigation rather than written off as a suicide.

None of them will get the chance to find out. Not yet, anyway.

My daughter's truth needed to be heard.- Val Charlette

That's because the federal government has not created a national task force that would investigate all unresolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls — despite the fact that was a key call for justice in the 2019 final report of the MMIWG inquiry.

"There's almost this narrative … of 'Don't tell me how to do my job,' and that needs to stop," Angela Lavallee says. "Police and policing and medical examiners need to listen."

The call for a national task force — call for justice 9.9 — was one of 231 calls for justice in the June 2019 final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The calls, which the report calls "legal imperatives," are directives that governments and institutions were instructed to implement to stop the violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.

The inquiry report directed that the national task force would "review and, if required, reinvestigate each case of all unresolved files of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people from across Canada."

It is, however, one of more than half of the calls for justice that, as of July 2023, has not been started, according to a CBC analysis. The federal government says it would need a commitment by multiple governments, police departments and Indigenous leaders to implement it. 

Thus far, that hasn't happened.

In a written statement to the CBC, a federal government spokesperson said that "the Government of Canada remains steadfast in its commitment to working closely with all partners on this critical, ongoing priority to address the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people, and end the ongoing national crisis of MMIWG2S+."

Families of lost loved ones, meanwhile, live with unresolved cases that may never be reopened.

Angela Lavallee's granddaughter Zaylynn Emerald Rain was just nine months old when she died in 2015. Despite Lavallee's suspicion that she'd been fatally assaulted by someone they knew, her concerns were dismissed, she says.

"No thorough investigation was ever done. Her [cause of] death was deemed undetermined," Lavallee says. "I was called the 'paranoid' grandmother."

It feels like nobody cares about us.- Destiny Paupanakis

Val Charlette also lives with the pain of an unresolved case. She believes she has the answers that would solve it.

In October 2022, the body of her daughter, Tristan Jobb, was found on a golf course in Creighton, Sask., off the beaten path and several kilometres from where she was last seen. Her face was bruised; her hair was matted and covered in debris. 

The coroners' office determined her death was not suspicious. In a traditional cultural ceremony, however, Charlette came to a different conclusion.

"I was told in that ceremony that someone had given her a [date rape] drug with a needle … and that they accidentally overdosed her, and they had to take her body somewhere. And I know it's far from science," Charlette says.

Her daughter's truth, as she called it, won't be recognized by the justice system.

"Science says I have to see it to believe it. With our culture … my daughter's truth needed to be heard."

A national task force, with Indigenous representation, would listen to that truth, Charlette says.

"[They would] know how to look at a scene, [they would] carry sacred bundles to be a part of it, they can see things that we can't really see," Charlotte says. "So that the only responsibility that local law enforcement would have is to secure the scene."

Destiny Paupanakis is blunt about the lack of progress on call for justice 9.9.

"It feels like nobody cares about us. There's no justice," she says.

Paupanakis wonders if an Indigenous-led team of investigators would believe her suspicions that her sister Angel Blue Sky did not die by suicide.

"Like she'd always say, 'I'd never kill myself, so if anything ever happens to me, just know that I didn't kill myself,'" Paupanakis recalls.

An Indigenous-led justice system, she says, could rid the risk of racism-fuelled investigations.

"Justice would mean getting the truth out there … and our people having our own police service."

Support is available for anyone affected by details of these cases. If you require support, you can contact Ka Ni Kanichihk's Medicine Bear Counselling, Support and Elder Services at 204-594-6500, ext. 102 or 104, (within Winnipeg) or 1-888-953-5264 (outside Winnipeg).

Support is also available via Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Liaison unit at 1-800-442-0488 or 204-677-1648.