Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls: A Discourse Analysis of Gendered Colonial Violence in Canada

Abstract

By closely examining the MMIWG Final Report (2019), this MRP asks the question: What does an analysis of this official document reveal about gendered colonialism in Canada? Canada‘s 2019 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry (MMIWG) Final Report identified the ―underlying social, economic, cultural, institutional and historical causes contributing to the ongoing violence and particular vulnerabilities of Indigenous women and girls in Canada‖ (Executive Summary, 2019, pg. 5). The paper begins by laying out critical Indigenous feminism as the theoretical framework and discourse analysis as the methodology. Sections 1 and 2 of this MRP focus on an analysis of the Final Report. The first section provides an overview of the national inquiry and its expanded definition of violence as gendered and colonial. The second section examines the final report‘s (2019) framework for ending gendered colonial violence and the report‘s calls for justice by focusing on how to hold the government and legal institutions accountable. The MRP then concludes with an analysis of mainstream and Indigenous receptions of the final report with a focus on news media stories. This MRP argues that gendered colonial violence endures because Canadian political and legal institutions have remained committed to (re)producing colonial violence by framing violence against Indigenous women as a cultural or individual problem rather than a systemic problem. The paper explores how gendered colonial violence continues due to the failure by Canada and its institutions to make the necessary changes required (socially, economically, culturally) in order to end gendered violence against Indigenous women and girls. This has resulted in Canada maintaining settler dominance and allowing for the continued oppression Indigenous women and girlsface.By providing an expanded definition of violence as gendered and colonial and through its calls for justice, the MMIWG national inquiry final report (2019) provides a significant opportunity to end gendered colonial violence and map possibilities for substantive social transformation.