Northern Manitoba grand chief looks back at 2016 and the fight for MMIW

Sheila North Wilson began 2016 with hope Canadians would better understand the tragic scope of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

One year later, they're beginning to get the picture, she said. Nowit's time to raise awareness about the people who target them.

"I hope that we get more of a picture on who these predators are," said North Wilson, the grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak. "How are they allowed to function? How are they allowed to have cars and houses and jobs to keep doing this? Who are they?"

That's just one of the resolutions North Wilson made during a look back at 2016and a look ahead to the new year.

North Wilson, the first person to use the hashtag #MMIW (for missing and murdered Indigenous women), spent much of the year shedding light on what she calls a "sad chapter in our history."

She released part one of a documentary film series, 1,200-plus,which profiled the victims and their stories. She's now completing the next in the series.

• Made-in-Manitoba documentary explores MMIW issue in Canada

But it's the loved ones of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls who really brought change in 2016, she said. They're the ones who helped propel the issue to a national stage.

"The grassroots women and girls and men and their families they were relentless in raising awareness," she said. "They deserve a lot of respect. They've brought this to a national attention and even a national election issue."

Tough talk with police

North Wilson said she is also cautiously optimistic that 2016 saw improvements in police and Indigenous relations.

Those improvements camethanks to continuedand at times "really difficult"conversations with both Winnipeg Police Service and RCMP officials, during which she wassometimes criticized and patronized, she said.

"I was told that my feelings were hurt. It was like, 'oh, I'm sorry your feelings were hurt,' " she recalled. "We had a problem with that."

I do believe things seem to be changing.- ManitobaKeewatinowiOkimakanakGrand Chief Sheila North Wilson

But the conversations progressed.

"I've had the opportunity to give them some reality checks, and I do believe that things seem to be changing."

Then there's the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, officially launched in 2016.

The coming year will give families another chance to speak up for their loved ones, but North Wilsonis only tentatively optimistic that it will provide the accountability these families are seeking.

"Families wanted police to be under the microscope. That's what they wanted in the inquiry," she said. "The inquiry doesn't specify that that's going to happen."

Face the racism

They also wantbetter acknowledgement of the racism that fuels the crimes against these women and girls, North Wilson said.

"Messages that it's okay to disregard Indigenous people and make fun of them and all that," she said. "We don't deserve this kind of treatment and we have to stand up where we can and how we can."

Ideally, the inquiry hearings in 2017 will accomplish that, she said,even among those Canadians who still deny the crisis.

"I think that's where an inquiry will help. It'll bring people together to talk about it and to think about it, even if they're not willing to go in and learn themselves on what the issue is," North Wilson said. "And that's where we'll start to see, I believe, bigger levels of changes and bigger consciousness of what this issue is."