It's everyone's job to help end the MMIWG crisis, advocates say — and here's how

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Lorelei Williams is exhausted.

The Coast Salish woman has been on the frontlines of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls crisis in Vancouver since 2012, when she founded Butterflies in Spirit to raise awareness about the problem.

Williams also knows the ripple effects of the crisis first-hand. Her aunt, Belinda Williams, went missing in 1978, and her cousin, Tanya Holyk, was a victim of Robert Pickton in 1996.

Today, Williams' advocacy has shifted from raising awareness through dance to supporting families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people in any way she can. This includes organizing rallies, being with families when they speak to police, searching for missing loved ones and holding candlelight vigils when someone is found dead.

"This is my life now," Williams told Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild

Despite her work over the past decade and the attention the crisis gained because of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Williams says it feels like nothing is changing. 

The past year has been difficult for Indigenous communities — in particular in Manitoba and British Columbia. In December, Winnipeg police charged a man with first-degree murder in the deaths of four Indigenous women: Morgan Beatrice Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois and Buffalo Woman, who police have not been able to identify.

Families in Vancouver are mourning the losses of Chelsea Poorman, Tatyanna Harrison and Noelle O'Soup, whose bodies were all found in 2022. 

"I feel like we're doing as much as we can to be heard. I'm always saying the same things over and over again," Williams noted. "I feel like I'm always hitting my head against the wall. Like, why can't we make these changes? What do we gotta do?"

The National Inquiry's final report was released in 2019 and considers violence against Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people to be genocide. According to the inquiry, Indigenous women and girls are 16 times more likely to be murdered or to disappear than white women. 

As a document with over 1,000 pages and more than 200 calls for justice — changes that must be made in many areas of Canadian society, the inquiry states, to end the crisis — getting a handle on the problem can seem like a daunting task.

But people like Williams who've been working on this issue for years say there are many things Canadians can do to tackle the crisis and help them do the heavy lifting. And, advocates say, it isn't just governments and institutions like policing that need to make changes. It's the responsibility of all Canadians to take these steps. 

WATCH | MMIWG is a national emergency, advocates say: