“What can we do tomorrow?” Maggie Cywink wants to know. “I don’t have another six months to wait for the government to meet everybody and figure it out.”

Maggie’s sister Sonya Cywink was found murdered in southern Ontario in 1994. Bernadette Smith’s sister Claudette Osborne-Tyo went missing in Winnipeg on July 25, 2008. And Lauren Crazybull’s great-aunt Jacqueline Crazybull was killed in a random attack in Calgary on July 11, 2007.

None of these cases have been solved.

Following the Liberal government’s announcement of an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, these three women join Desmond and guest host Supriya to talk about what they want the government to do, whether an inquiry is the right move and how they’ve felt let down by First Nations leaders on this issue.

A few accronyms come up in this episode, so here’s a glossary:

AFN = Assembly of First Nations

COO = Chiefs of Ontario

NAO = National Aboriginal Organizations

We reached out to the Assembly of First Nations for comment and did not receive one by the time of publishing. We will update the story if we receive a reply.