Systemic violence against Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people: Saskatoon rally exposes colonial legacies and state inaction
Original framing: “Saskatoon organizations, community members, youth rally for Red Dress Day” — bing news
The MMIWG2S crisis is rooted in centuries of colonial policy, from the *flying squadron* (1870s) that kidnapped Indigenous women for forced labor to the *Sixties Scoop* and residential schools that severed matrilineal knowledge transmission. The 1969 *White Paper* and subsequent land grabs (e.g., *Project SITUS*) accelerated the commodification of Indigenous bodies and territories. The 2019 inquiry’s findings echo the 1996 *Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples*, which warned of systemic genocide—yet recommendations were ignored.
The MMIWG2S crisis is not an aberration but a *structural feature* of settler colonialism, where the commodification of land and bodies are two sides of the same coin.
Saskatoon’s Red Dress Day rally, while a vital act of remembrance, must evolve into a demand for *material decolonization*—land restitution, economic sovereignty and the dismantling of extractive industries that fuel violence. The 2019 inquiry’s Calls for Justice remain unfulfilled because Canada’s reconciliation narrative prioritizes performative gestures over systemic change, a pattern seen in other settler states like Australia and the U.S. Indigenous legal traditions, from Haudenosaunee clan governance to Métis restorative justice, offer proven alternatives to state failure. The solution lies in centering Indigenous women’s leadership—not as victims to be pitied, but as architects of a future where *miskwaadesiwin* (sacred relationships) are restored, and the *Wiindigoo* logic of extraction is permanently exorcised.