When Stephen Harper refused to authorize a public inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women, he was denounced as heartless. And perhaps he is.

But the prime minister was also, at one level, correct. The last thing native Canadians need is another public inquiry into their plight. We have had plenty already.

The point now is to do something.

Where Harper erred was in his insistence that the murder of aboriginal women and girls is simply a criminal matter — that it is, in his words, not a “sociological phenomenon.”

Yet it is exactly that. Aboriginal women, according to an RCMP report released in May, are more likely to be murdered than non-aboriginal women. That is a sociological fact.

What is also a fact, however, is that aboriginal men are even more likely to be murdered than their non-aboriginal counterparts.

As the Starrecently reported, Statistics Canada figures show that over the last three decades, some 745 aboriginal women were murdered — an unacceptably high number. Yet over the same period, 1,750 aboriginal men were killed.

Put simply, this means that all aboriginals — male and female — are far more likely to suffer violent death than other Canadians. This is the sociological phenomenon that Harper would like to ignore.

The reasons behind this violence are well-known — in part because of the numerous inquiries into aboriginal issues that have already taken place.

The 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples laid out the causes bluntly. Too many native people, the commission wrote, were caught in a cycle of despair and violence.

This violence was fuelled by alcoholism, poverty, high levels of unemployment and overcrowded housing.

Violence against aboriginal women, the royal commission wrote, had to be seen within the context of “cultural self-hate” spawned by hopelessness.

Manitoba’s 1999 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry report came to similar conclusions. It noted that some 80 per cent of aboriginal women were victims of family violence, in large part because they faced “double discrimination.”

As the 1996 royal commission report said, this family violence — plus poverty and ill-health — led to educational failure. Educational failure, in return, guaranteed that the next generation would be caught in the same trap of poverty, abuse and violence.

The commission wrote that all of these problems had to be tackled at once — that piecemeal reforms would not work.

Noting that aboriginals make up a disproportionate number of street children in some cities, it placed the blame squarely on dysfunctional family relationships.

“Children and youth who resort to the street,” the commission wrote, “do so because in their view it is better than where they come from” even though this choice can lead to “violence, exploitation and in some cases early death . . .

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“Street youth often need protection from the very people responsible for their care, be it their biological, foster or adoptive families.”

How had this happened? The 1996 royal commission focused on history — the broken treaties, the residential school system, the destruction of native culture — all of which demoralized entire communities.

And it recommended an ambitious array of solutions. One track was explicitly political. The commission argued that self-government, plus a share of resource wealth would help First Nation communities take control of and responsibility for their own lives.

The second was financial. The commission called on Ottawa to invest $30 billion over 15 years in aboriginal communities for education, employment, housing and better child care.

Tellingly, almost none of this came to pass.

The Liberal government of the day called the recommendations too expensive and ignored most of them. Nothing much was done. Indeed, the very fact that an inquiry had been held seemed to absolve the government from further action.

Which, I fear, is what would happen should yet another inquiry be called.

We know what’s behind the violence against aboriginal women (and men). It is not mysterious. As the RCMP report notes, some 90 per cent of the killings are committed by family members and others known to the victims.

We know from earlier public inquiries both the proximate and deep-rooted causes of this violence. We know the broad outlines of a solution. We know it would cost money.

All we need do now is act.