What Indigenous workers are doing to end intimate-partner violence in Ontario's northwest

At least five of nine intimate-partner homicides in northwestern Ontario over a five-year period involved Indigenous victims, according to a CBC News investigation — but the issue is something healing and support workers in the region have been approaching with urgency for decades.

The regional findings are part of a 16-month investigation that looked at 392 cases of intimate-partner homicides across Canada between Jan. 1, 2015, and June 30, 2020. On average, it found one in four victims in the country was Indigenous.

The findings are also consistent with other research into violence involving Indigenous people.

For instance, the report into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) noted "extremely high" rates of domestic and family violence, and issued urgent calls for more resources and programs to prevent further victimization 

Marlene Pierre, an elder in Fort William First Nation, has been part of the healing efforts since the 1980s. She says governments have failed to address the issue of domestic violence, despite reports indicating the extent of it.

She points to the "Breaking Free" report, issued by the Ontario Native Women's Association in 1989 in Thunder Bay, which looked at the extent of family violence in Indigenous communities, and proposed solutions to what was then described as "an epidemic."

Pierre said the results of the report were concerning. Eighty per cent of respondents had personally experienced family violence, and nearly one-quarter of those surveyed said they personally knew cases of family violence that had resulted in death, "most frequently, to the women."

Pierre said the high level of violence is linked to colonial policies and practices — like residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the child welfare system and birth alerts, and Canada's Indian Act, which only conferred status to women through marriage.

"It was a very divisive method of controlling our families and breaking down our families," she said, referring to the Indian Act.

The Breaking Free report said family violence is also rooted within the context of other social problems like poverty, substance use, homelessness and incarceration, which disproportionately affect Indigenous people.

But in the decades since that report was released, Pierre said, successive federal and provincial governments have failed Indigenous people.

"They have not done enough."

Pierre advocates for greater access to a wide spectrum of programs and services addressing family violence.

Cora McGuire-Cyrette, executive director of the Ontario Native Women's Association, said an important step would be to reinstate the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, an Indigenous-led organization established in 1998 to co-ordinate a comprehensive response to the legacy of residential schools and associated community health impacts.