This is a story about a father who lost his daughter. As with so many other murdered and missing Indigenous women cases, he has never had answers to his questions about her death.

John Fox's beautiful daughter, Cheyenne, plunged 24 floors to her death from the balcony of a Toronto condo building April 25, 2013. She had long black hair, flashing dark eyes. She was a member of Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island who was restless and left her home for the big city. She was vulnerable. Her family fears she was caught up in human trafficking.

But she was also a young mom and before she died she was desperately trying to turn her life around. She often wrote letters to her loved ones to tell them she was going to succeed.

The conclusion of the Toronto Police Services investigation into Cheyenne's death came quickly: no foul play. Police originally thought it was suicide. They concluded she fell off the balcony and the man she was in the apartment with that night did not kill her.

In a 2015 report, Ontario coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer ruled that Cheyenne Fox's death was not a suicide, saying instead that it was "undetermined." Huyer's summary of the police evidence paints a picture of a volatile scene unfolding in the condo that night along with a tragic 911 call.

The family wanted Cheyenne's case reopened and examined but Toronto police have refused. This is what they told the Star in 2015: "The death has been classified as underdetermined. Cheyenne's death has not been classified as a homicide and there is no criminal activity involved. This conclusion is shared by the coroner's office. As a result, the investigation will not be reopened."

The family has since raised concerns about the police investigation, and they are taking those concerns and Toronto Police Services to court.

John Fox calls me every few months. Sometimes more. He calls to talk and to fill me in on what he is doing, about the rallies and protests he is helping to organize or take part in. He's always been socially active. He used to take Cheyenne to Idle No More protests.

John is a dad desperately trying to get justice for Cheyenne. Without justice, he will have no closure, and without closure he won't rest. He was in the national news May 23 when he and other MMIWG families held a press conference in Ottawa, promising to blockade upcoming meetings of the national inquiry due to its stumbled start and lack of support for the families.

I asked him what he wanted to see out of the inquiry. He wants an examination of the role of the police added to the mandate.

"Myself, along with the hundreds of others of missing and murdered families, we want the police to be accountable," he said. "We had a gathering recently at Six Nations. It was very intense, and almost every family member mentioned policing."

Also, he wants to see Canadians offering more respect to the families and to the women who died. "Right now, they aren't seen that way. They have been seen as less than something else. Until people change their minds about our women, our men and our children, it is going to be like that," he said.

In Whitehorse, at the last day of the MMIWG family hearings, heartfelt testimony was heard from Terry Ladue, a son who lost his mother. He, too, warned the inquiry better get it right.

Ladue's hands shook as he delivered powerful testimony to the commissioners about his mother, Jane Dick, who was beaten to death after he and his siblings were taken from her by child welfare agents in the 1960s and placed in non-indigenous homes, The Canadian Press reported.

"The effect it had on me is very simple. I don't know how to love. I was never taught that," he said.

"The effect it had on me is it drove me down to Vancouver and stuck a needle up my arm for 13 years, trying to kill the pain."

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All the government has ever done is hurt him, take him from his parents and throw Indigenous people in jail so trusting a federal inquiry is not easy, he said.

Toronto Star