Rematriating Justice: Honouring the Lives of Our Indigenous Sisters

In June 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its Final Report titled Reclaiming Power and Place. The report documented 231 ＂ Calls for Justice＂ demanding immediate action against racialized, sexualized and gender-based violence. The report condemned Canadian society for its inaction and described the violence as ＂ a national tragedy of epic proportion.＂ It has been eight years since the release of Forever Loved: Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada (2016) and four years since the release of Reclaiming Power and Place and we continue to witness racialized, sexualized and gender-based violences across Turtle Island. This book contributes to these Calls for Justice by demanding accountability and policy change. The book centres the voices of Indigenous women, families and communities by offering essays, testimonies, and reflections that honour collective calls to rematriate justice for our Indigenous sisters.

Dr. Jennifer Brant belongs to the Kanien?kehá ka (Mohawk Nation) with family ties to Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto where she writes and teaches about Indigenous maternal pedagogies and Indigenous literatures. Her work positions Indigenous literatures as educational tools to foster sociopolitical action and calls for immediate responses to racialized, sexualized, and gender-based violence. Dr. Dawn Memee Lavell Harvard, Ph.D., is a proud member of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, on Manitoulin Island and currently serves as the Director at the First Peoples House of Learning at Trent University. She was recognized as the first Indigenous Trudeau Scholar for her work in Indigenous education and has sought to advance the rights of Indigenous women and their families in various roles including her past presidency of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. She continues her advocacy through her current role on the Board of the Canadian Women’s Foundation, the National Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, Roots of Empathy, Mothers Matter Centers, and the local Community Health Center.