Lorelei Williams still feels immense pain when she thinks about how police handled the missing persons file for her cousin, whose DNA was eventually found on serial killer Robert Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.
“When my cousin Tanya Holyk was being reported missing by my aunt, her file was closed a month after because the VPD clerk was racist and judgmental,” Williams said.
Holyk’s file was closed by a civilian working in Vancouver Police Department’s missing persons unit, who suspected she had just been partying.
As she choked back tears at the memory, Williams said she has mixed emotions about the federal government’s announcement Wednesday that Canada will begin a long-awaited national inquiry into the thousands of missing and murdered aboriginal women.
“I feel very overwhelmed, emotional, yet hopeful at the same time. So many of us have been fighting for this for so long. Some have been fighting for this for over 30 years,” said Williams, who spoke Wednesday with a coalition of aboriginal and advocacy groups in Vancouver.
She’s anxious that after hundreds of recommendations made over decades, including those outlined at the Highway of Tears Symposium and in Wally Oppal’s B.C. inquiry, the national inquiry still doesn’t outline a plan to investigate and hold accountable government and police agencies for the human rights infractions and racism that led to all the closed files.
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Williams said her aunt also went missing in 1978, but her case wasn’t investigated until 2004 because police wouldn’t take her situation seriously. She also cited other family members, whose cases of violence were dismissed by police, including a cousin who was raped and an aunt who was pushed out a Downtown Eastside window.
“We have so many family and friends who have experienced violence in their lives, including myself.”
Williams, who works with women and victims of violence, said she’s not sure she’s ready to embrace this inquiry.
“Will the mandate recognize our rights from a human rights framework? It must ensure the basic human rights of indigenous women and girls are fulfilled.”
Still, she has faith in Canada’s first federal aboriginal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. And she’s encouraged by the federal appointment of Marion Buller, B.C.’s first female First Nations judge, to lead Canada’s national inquiry.
Buller’s appointment was applauded by many in B.C.’s legal community, including Oppal.
“She’s a highly respected judge,” he said. “I think she’s a very good choice to chair the inquiry.”
Buller was named to the provincial court bench in 1994 after a law career that included serving as commission counsel for the Cariboo-Chilcotin Justice Inquiry into how indigenous people are treated by the legal system.
One hallmark of her career as a judge was the establishment of B.C.’s first First Nations court, a restorative justice program that started hearing criminal cases in New Westminster in 2006. The focus is on rehabilitation rather than retribution, and everyone from family members to victims to First Nations elders is invited to contribute to the proceeding.
There are now four courts like this in B.C., and Buller has been working with her fellow board members at the Law Foundation of B.C. to expand the mandate of the program to include matters like child protection.
“She’s an extraordinary woman,” foundation board chair Warren Milman said. “We were very glad to have her and disappointed that we’re going to lose her, but it’s for a good cause.”
There are two key questions Buller and her fellow commissioners need to answer, according to Mary Teegee, whose cousin Ramona Wilson was just 16 years old when she was found murdered near Smithers in 1995: How did we get here? And why did Canada allow it to happen for so many years without any action?
She said recommendations mean nothing unless there are resources to ensure they are implemented.
“We know that many reports sit on a shelf gathering dust. We want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to this because it’s too important to get it wrong.”
She added that the inquiry must look at how to deal with ongoing systemic racism.
“By the very virtue that nothing has been done all these years that is a mark of racism — that people could overlook thousands of missing and murdered Indian women and it wasn’t a national crisis until just recently,” she said.
The two-year inquiry begins Sept. 1 and is projected to cost $53.8 million.
