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“They deserve a future,” said Associate Professor Jennifer Brant, as she recited Alyssa General’s poem Accomplice at the gathering of mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties, and friends in the OISE Library on Feb. 24. The “they” refers to many Indigenous women, girls, sisters, and victims of colonized, racialized and sexualized violence.

The Indigenous Literatures Lab, directed by Dr. Jennifer Brant, invited a panel of select colleagues to the OISE Library stage – folks who co-edited and contributed to the collection Rematriating Justice: Honouring the Lives of Our Sisters in Spirit, to explore its themes. The Indigenous Literatures Lab Project Coordinator and OISE doctoral student, Gayatri Thakor, worked closely with Toronto-based Another Story bookshop to organize the event.

Co-editor Dr. Dawn Lavell-Harvard, director of First Peoples House of Learning at Trent University, and co-author Sana Shah, a doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo, joined Dr. Brant on stage. Dr. Kai Recollet, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Women and Gender Studies Institute moderated the conversation.

The Rematriating Justice book and this conversation – a collection of essays, testimonies, and poems – directly contributes to these Calls for Justice by demanding accountability and policy change. The book centres the voices of Indigenous women, families and communities by offering insights that honour collective calls to rematriate justice for Indigenous sisters.

The book is a follow up to the release of the edited collection Forever Loved: Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada (2016) and reflects six years since the release of the 231 Calls to Justice published in the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

A Gathering Practice

The event was organized as a gathering that brought together community, scholars, and students. Grandmother Shirley, a proud member of Alderville First Nation, offered opening remarks followed by a smudging ceremony. With an interactive board for art and reflection, local beadwork vendors and refreshments from a local Indigenous caterer, the event organizers curated a gathering practice which sought to foster a welcoming environment for discussion, awareness and action to strongly call for justice for Indigenous families and communities.

The justice, in this case, is specific. While it is widely known that the Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 Calls to Action in 2016. There has been little movement on the 231 Calls to Justice released in 2019 by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Among the 231 Calls to Justice to address the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, and end systemic causes of this violence, are calls aimed at educational institutions and create trauma-informed curricula. Calls 11.1 and 11.2 are addressed to all levels of education to provide lessons and promote awareness about racialized, sexualized and gender-based violences against Indigenous peoples and ensure these lessons unpack the historical and contemporary realities of these violences by examining legislated policies and colonial practices that continue to affect Indigenous peoples in Canada today.

But, few of the calls for action and justice have been accomplished as highlighted in a

Lamenting the recent passing of Senator Murray Sinclair, Grandmother Shirley reminded attendees of his lessons on this matter. “Spiritual work is a huge responsibility,” she recalls of his past writings, that it is incumbent on us all to “raise that consciousness” and provide ongoing support for Indigenous women, girls, sisters and aunties.

Among the panelists was Dr. Lavell-Harvard, a mother herself and the daughter of who brought her case against gender-based discrimination in the Indian Act of Canada to the Supreme Court in 1973.  Dr. Lavell-Harvard shared her chapter on the topic of healing motherhood – that is, bringing the feminine back into justice. She urged listeners that we have to find a way to support each other as this fight for human rights continues.

That especially includes those closest to us. She recalled a story, as she and her family drove from Northern Ontario to a Premiers summit in Charlottetown – her small children, including her 4-year-old daughter. Dr. Lavell-Harvard had finished a radio interview about justice for Indigenous women and girls in the car, at one point saying that “our girls are in danger.”

When she finished, her 4-year-old was quietly listening, and had some questions.

“Am I in danger?” she asked her.

“’No, no you’re not in danger!’” Lavell-Harvard was near tears. She calmed her fears, but knew that there much work ahead to make it a reality.

Dr. Recollet asked the panel about the book’s themes, and asked each to speak about their connections and commitments to advancing the Calls to Justice. She was curious about how Sana Shah came to her doctoral work. Shah, whose doctoral work includes investigating the role mainstream media coverage shapes how Indigenous women and girls are perceived, first began engaging with Indigenous families as an undergraduate at Brock University – through the tutelage of Robyn Bourgeois, an Associate Professor in the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies there.

As initial questions about their experiences came to light, her attention quickly turned to mainstream media and how stories from Indigenous women and girls were explored and produced compared to those in white communities. Shah is seeking a more granular understanding of this dynamic.

“What about the systems in place?” Shah would ask, and her doctoral work has broadened her scope to a provincial and national context.

It is a sentiment that goes to the heart of these proceedings. As Dr. Brant remarked, this book and these conversations express the need for “layered and textured interventions” – ones that strengthen the case for the kind of justice reflected in the very title of the report