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Canada Calls Violence Against Indigenous Women ‘Genocide’

The government said “colonialism” and “discrimination” were to blame for the over 1,000 deaths of aboriginal women and girls in recent decades.

The deaths of over 1,000 aboriginal women and girls in Canada in recent decades was a national genocide, according to a government report issued Monday. Reuters reports that the Canadian government launched a probe into the deaths in 2016, and the resulting report blamed the violence against the group on “long-standing discrimination against indigenous people and Canada’s failure to protect them.” Police revealed in 2014 that 1,017 aboriginal women were murdered between 1980 and 2012, which the report concluded was the result of “colonialism” and “discrimination” against indigenous females and the 2SLGBTQQIA group—or the “two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual people.” Aboriginal people also reportedly experience higher rates of “crime, poverty, and addiction” despite only being about 4 percent of the Canadian population. “To the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Canada, to their families, and to survivors—we have failed you. But we will fail you no longer,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month.