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There were always two schools of thought as to what an inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women should look like.

When the Harper government rejected calls to establish the inquiry, their argument was that much of the information sought was already known.

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An RCMP report from 2014 looked at data going back to 1980 and came to a number of conclusions. One was that while Aboriginal women made up only 4% of the population they disproportionately accounted for 16% of murder victims.

The data though also revealed that the solve rate on these cases was 88% — almost identical to the national average — and that the majority of the women were murdered by Aboriginal men and people known to them. The facts didn’t warrant an inquiry created on the assumption that this is a phenomenon shrouded in mystery.

That was not, though, what inquiry advocates ever wanted. They wanted to talk about big picture trends and what’s now referred to as “systemic” problems. This is what the MMIW inquiry’s final report that was released Monday offers.