Annual MMIWG gathering continues, 12 years after Winnipeg woman’s disappearance

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This article was published 25/07/2020 (1940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Twelve years after her sister disappeared, a Winnipeg MLA says not much has changed for families of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Canada.

Bernadette Smith, the NDP MLA for Point Douglas, readied for a pandemic-adjusted gathering Saturday in honour of her sister Claudette Osborne-Tyo, who went missing at age 21 in July 2008. Restrictions to help stop the spread of COVID-19 meant the annual concert the family usually holds along with the vigil had to be postponed, but Smith said it’s still crucial for the community to come together in support of families who have lost loved ones and work to make changes that could prevent more deaths or disappearances.

“These gatherings are a way to bring people that aren’t directly connected, to bring everyone together to say enough of the violence. We’re all standing here united together to say we’ve had enough of it, we want it to stop and we want you to join us to come and really feel the pain the families are going through, but also to take some responsibility because we’re all in this together and it’s going to take all of us to end it,” Smith said.

“It’s been 12 long years, and people think that time heals, but it doesn’t. When you have someone missing, you’re constantly in pain, agony. It’s like a nightmare. We know somebody out there knows something.”

Osborne-Tyo is a mother of four, and now a grandmother, with a grandson who recently turned one. She was raped at 11 years old, her sister said, and her family believes that’s what led her to drug use and “working the streets,” contributing to her disappearance.

It’s been a year since Canada’s national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls released its recommendations, and just three weeks since the Winnipeg Police Service announced it is hiring a liasion to work as a point of contact with families of the missing and murdered.

Despite more public discussion of systemic racism, “I don’t think a lot has changed,” Smith said. More focus on youth programs could help, she suggested.

“I think a lot of it has to do with social programming and making sure that there’s access for youth in the community as well as education for kids in schools about the dangers that are out there and domestic violence. A lot of it has to do, I think, with poverty and not having access to things that people need, and then untreated trauma.”

The gathering for Osborne-Tyo is set to take place tonight, 7:30 p.m. at the corner of King Street and Selkirk Avenue, where she was last seen.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay