The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced on 8 December the launch of a national inquiry into the approximately 1,200 documented cases of indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered over three decades. The inquiry is a state-led response to the alarming rate of gender violence against indigenous communities across the country – a crisis that has resulted in international scrutiny of Canada’s failure to uphold the human and political rights of indigenous peoples.

The announcement was received with mixed emotions. There was applause from some quarters, including members of parliament and leaders from Canada’s largest aboriginal organisation, the Assembly of First Nations, who praised Trudeau for his move towards “a total renewal of the country’s relationship with its aboriginal population.”

Among indigenous families and advocates there was an understandable sense of relief and anticipation that the authorities will finally be forced to act on unsolved cases, potentially put an end to the epidemic of violence, and raise awareness about the deep-seated racism that is woven into the fabric of Canadian society. Affected families, survivors and community groups have been pushing for government action on this crisis for decades, but authorities have so far failed to respond in any meaningful way.

Others have raised serious concerns about Canada’s ability to deliver justice to indigenous communities at all.

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If you step back and look at the bigger picture, this is what becomes visible: the call for a national inquiry exists against the backdrop of Canada’s ugly and violent colonial history. It is easy to link Canada’s failure to acknowledge and engage with this injustice to its last prime minister, Stephen Harper, who repeatedly refused to support an inquiry throughout his nine-year tenure and infamously stated, “Um, it’s not really high on our radar, to be honest.” Harper, though, is only one in a long line of colonial leaders who have actively participated in, and benefited from, the widespread normalisation of violence against indigenous peoples.

In fact this story of violence, erasure and complicity dates back to before Canada became Canada.

The socio-political realities that make it possible for indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people (who are almost always left out of reports), to be murdered and disappeared in Canada originates in the colonial violence that enabled the creation of the settler state and the expansion of capitalism. Canada could not have been built without it. Colonial acquisition of lands was enacted through targeted gender violence to destroy indigenous peoples’ connection to their territory by attacking those at the heart of that connection: indigenous women. It also served to debase their power and autonomy, fragment societies and curtail indigenous nations’ ability to create life.

The contemporary inheritance of this colonial history is reflected in the conditions of systemic vulnerability in which all indigenous people have to live, but are experienced most acutely by women, girls and two-spirit people. The systems of extractive industry, education, healthcare, child welfare, social services and the prison system are all fraught with racism. This reality makes advocating for change on any single front extremely challenging.

The state and criminal justice system have completely and utterly failed to respond to these murders and disappearances. This, along with active victim-blaming, has created a culture of impunity for men to rape and murder at will. State-sanctioned safety and protection for indigenous peoples is an illusion at best.

But this is not only a matter of failures in police protection: across Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local law enforcement agencies are active perpetrators of racism and violence against indigenous nations, with particular brutality being shown towards indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. The criminal justice system and its officers are central to the problem.

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So how can the Canadian state be held accountable for its complicity in colonial gender violence – both past and present – when it is the driving force behind this inquiry? It is crucial that we demand an answer to this question. The indigenous affairs minister, Carolyn Bennett, has said: “The end goal of the inquiry is to find concrete action that will be able to stop this national tragedy.” If there is to be any hope of this goal being met, the inquiry must be held to account and made to confront the deepest root causes of the crisis. Anything short of this is an affront, will add further injury to indigenous peoples, and is a denial of state culpability. The inquiry must amount to more than just another list of unimplemented recommendations. And we must continue to invoke a sense of social and political history so we are honest about where this violence comes from and don’t lose sight of what is at stake.

Let’s also be clear that the national inquiry is just one strategy in this fight for justice that has been led by those who have already lost so much and still have everything to lose: individual survivors, families of the missing and murdered, and those who remain targets of colonial gender violence. These efforts extend to a greater movement for decolonisation and freedom that is being led by indigenous peoples across Turtle Island; a movement that promotes large-scale land restitution, indigenous youth leadership, community-led initiatives to fight ongoing dispossession and trauma, artistic and creative interventions, and the revitalisation of indigenous governance systems.

Regardless of this inquiry, indigenous nations will continue to take action to protect life and secure justice – with or without the support of the Canadian state.