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OTTAWA — Most Canadians agree that the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women amount to genocide, a new poll suggests.

But the Leger poll also suggests there’s disagreement about when it occurred and who is responsible.

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Fifty-three per cent of respondents agreed with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, which last week concluded that the tragedy is part of an “ongoing genocide” that has been centuries in the making. Another 34 per cent disagreed.

But there was little consensus about what form that genocide took, with respondents citing everything from Europeans giving Indigenous People blankets infected with smallpox to the current-day scandal involving the forced sterilization of Indigenous women.

Among the top responses, 17 per cent blamed colonization and the loss of Indigenous lands to European settlers, 15 per cent blamed church-run residential schools and another 15 per cent pointed to the destruction of cultural identity and forced assimilation. Just three per cent blamed racism broadly.