It’s all quite bittersweet. The government finally admitting that Canada needs this information is huge. But the numbers are painful. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told a parliamentary committee that the findings were a “surprise.” To whom, I wonder? Definitely not to the familes, friends, and communities of these missing women and girls. But I digress.

“What we can say is that there is a misrepresentation, or overrepresentation, within the aboriginal community of missing and murdered women,” he announced. “There are 4 percent aboriginal women in Canada—I think there are 16 percent of the murdered women who are aboriginal, 12 percent of the missing women are aboriginal.”

I suppose this is why he is surprised. But it still hasn’t occurred to the government and law enforcement to listen to these peoples. As wonderful as the official report is, this still must be painful to many families who did research that was deemed invalid.

APTN reported the RCMP requested a small look at files from 200 different police forces across Canada to collect data. And it has the ability to be useful.

“This initiative will help the RCMP and its partners identify the risk and vulnerability factors associated with missing and murdered aboriginal women to guide us in the development of future prevention, intervention and enforcement policies and initiatives with the intent of reducing violence against aboriginal women and girls,” Sergeant Julie Gagnon said in an email to the Globe and Mail.

RCMP may finally view aboriginal peoples lives as important enough to look into their deaths, despite criticizing the NWAC for its numbers in the past and politicians spitting in the face of such inquiries.

Yet the stance on inquiries themselves has not changed. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney rejected the calls from opposition at least four times. In the same breath, Blaney announced that foul play is suspected in two-thirds of those 160 missing cases, while the rest are for unknown reasons. His rejection and this data seem to counteract each other.

Blaney also said that it was a time for action instead of more paperwork. But, in March, during the horrible time when Loretta Saunders was found dead and another inquiry request was tabled, Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of NWAC, explained the importance of an inquiry.

The Globe and Mail explained Dumont-Smith’s stance like this: “an inquiry would study every angle of the problem in a way that has not been done before, and could compel people who have important information to testify.”

Seems reasonable.

If Canada does not begin asking marginalized groups’ for input, we will be in a perpetual state of oppressor-oppressed. Most of us are taking the right steps forward. To avoid taking five steps back, government and law officials must become willing to learn from those they previously called irrational, because it turns out they were right.

“This event is organized and led by women in the DTES [Downtown Eastside] because women—especially indigenous women—face physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis,” the Feb 14 Women’s Memorial March Committee writes on the march website.

The site describes the January 1991 murder on Powell St.  as a catalyst that moved women into action. The victim’s name is not shared out of respect for the wishes of her family, who will attend the Vancouver event at the Carnegie Community Centre Theatre on 401 Main St.

According to “The Tragedy of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women of Canada” a 2011 report by the Vancouver Police Department and the Women’s Memorial March Committee, though Aboriginal women make up only four percent of the Canadian female population, they also make up the majority of missing or murdered women.

“Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Coast Salish Territories,” reads the February 14 event description. “Twenty years later, the women’s memorial march continues to honour the lives of missing and murdered women.”

March events will take place in not only Vancouver but Victoria, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Edmonton, Calgary, London and Owen Sound.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna writes Gender Block every week and maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.