Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government begins the daunting task Monday of acting on the long-awaited and already controversial final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

The report, a copy of which was leaked to numerous news outlets including the Star late last week, will be officially released at a two-hour closing ceremony at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., on Monday morning.

Entitled “Reclaiming Power and Place,” the report presents a damning and unvarnished assessment of Canada’s treatment of Indigneous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) people while presenting more than 200 recommendations.

“The truth is that we live in a country whose laws and institutions perpetuate violations of basic human and Indigenous rights,” chief commissioner Marion Buller writes in her preface.

“These violations amount to nothing less than the deliberate, often covert campaign of genocide against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This is not what Canada is supposed to be about; it is not what it purports to stand for.”

So far, the federal government has not commented on how it plans to respond to the report’s findings.

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The report delves into an exhaustive range of topics, including gaps in child and family services and infrastructure in remote communities, the removal of Indigenous children from their families, barriers to education in Indigenous cultures and languages, and the “failure” of police services to protect Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people through “adequate and bias-free policing.”

The report also stresses that despite signing on to international declarations and treaties affecting Indigenous rights, Canada has failed to seriously put in place the terms of such agreements, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

A 2014 overview of missing Indigenous women by the RCMP reported that police-recorded incidents of homicides and unresolved missing cases totaled 1,181 between 1980 and 2012. Of those, 1,017 were homicide victims and 164 were missing.

The inquiry, which began in September 2016, saw the participation of some 2,380 people and heard more than 1,000 hours of testimony, according to the report. Many accounts from survivors and family members of the missing and murdered are interspersed through the document.

But not all relatives and friends of victims chose to participate.

Meggie Cywink, whose younger sister Sonya Cywink was killed 25 years ago, characterized the inquiry as a “colonial process” that missed the voices of many families members. In 2017, she was part of a national coalition that wrote to Trudeau calling for a reset of the inquiry to make it “truly inclusive, Indigenous-led and community-driven.”

“They did not want to do that,” said Cywink, who grew up on Whitefish River First Nation. “It was a colonial process. It was run by the government ... they saw themselves as the experts.”

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Cywink chose not to give testimony.

Sonya Cywink disappeared from London, Ont., on Aug. 26, 1994. Her body was found with signs of trauma four days later at Southwold Earthworks National Historic Site, a prehistoric First Nation settlement in Elgin County. She was 31 and pregnant. No one has been held responsible for her death.

A spokesperson for the National Inquiry told the Star Sunday that it is aware that an “unauthorized document, purported to be the National Inquiry’s Final Report, has been obtained by certain members of the media in advance of its official release” but would not discuss specific findings or recommendations before their official publication.

Dissatisfaction from family members of victims was just one aspect of a challenging and often-fraught process that saw more than two dozen resignations, including those of two executive directors and commissioner Marilyn Poitras. At one point, the inquiry asked for a two-year extension, which was not granted. Instead, the government extended the inquiry for an additional six months.

Among the report’s recommendations or “calls for justice”:

the establishment of a National Indigenous and Human Rights Tribunal;

the creation of an independent mechanism to report annually on the implementation of the National Inquiry’s Calls for Justice to Parliament;

the federal government, in partnership with Indigenous Peoples and provincial and territorial governments, develop and implement an Anti-Racism and Anti-Sexism National Action Plan to end racist and sexualized stereotypes of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people;

all governments ensure that adequate plans and funding are put into place for safe and affordable transit and transportation services and infrastructure for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people living in remote or rural communities;

all governments immediately and dramatically transform Indigenous policing from its current state as a mere delegation to an exercise in self-governance and self-determination over policing;

all governments fund an increase in recruitment of Indigenous Peoples to all police services, and for all police services to include representation of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, inclusive of diverse Indigenous cultural backgrounds, within their ranks.

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