Opinion: Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls – police aren’t doing enough

April 28, 2016
A vigil was held on April 25 in Toronto, the third anniversary of Cheyenne Fox's death.
A vigil was held on April 25 in Toronto, the third anniversary of Cheyenne Fox’s death.

By John Fox

April 25 marked three years since Cheyenne Fox was murdered in Toronto.   Cheyenne fell 24 stories to her death.

At first the Toronto police ruled Cheyenne’s death as suicide.   In 2015 the Coroner re ruled it “undetermined”.   To date, the Toronto police still haven’t administered a lie detector on the occupant who was with Cheyenne Fox last.  No charges were ever laid in respect to Cheyennes inability to leave the residence by police because Cheyenne wasn’t allowed to leave the premises by the person occupying the condo.  The occupant basically held her and the Toronto police still need to investigate that explain why they didn’t follow through with several 911 calls before Cheyenne met her fate.

Two other women besides Cheyenne died that short period of time, Tara Gardner who was run over by a train and Bella Laboucan who fell 34 stories to her death and the police still haven’t solved any of these cases.

Now, two other young teen native women lost there lives in Kenora – Delaine Copenace and Azraya Kokopenace.

A few days ago, a call out was issued in Thunder Bay that men were driving around in a vehicle attempting to kidnap Aboriginal women.    I only can imagine the Thunder Bay Police won’t investigate this claim either as they never had the interest of its First Nations in mind.

In the end, we suspect the police know the criminals, the human trafficking rings and the murderers of our women but fail to do do anything and if they do it is barely under half steam on there part.   As citizens we can’t expect anything less from police.  The police view of us as native citizens are “Just another dead Indian”.

On this note, take the time to honour the women-MMIWG who have perished under colonialism.    We are a proud resilient people and we need to march together for justice for almost 2000 MMIWG.     We can’t expect reconciliation or justice if this practice of murdering our women and children or men is allowed to go on.

A peaceful event is slated for May 23rd in Toronto at Allen Gardens to commemorate MMIWG, the child, the men and the land and the environment   We hope you join us.

link for May 23rd is, https://www.facebook.com/groups/926204790811152/?ref=bookmarks

In unity.