State Complicity: Settler Colonialism, Multisided Violence, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada

Abstract

Abstract This article theorizes and analyzes the Canadian state’s complicity in the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in terms of the acts of omission (inaction) and commission (action) of the police and courts. Building on the intersectional perspective of Indigenous and antiracist feminist scholarship on MMIWG, I argue that these acts of omission and commission are rooted in a context of “multisided violence” that is colonial in nature: state action and inaction reproduce and normalize the conditions in which Indigenous women and girls can be murdered with impunity. I analyze reports by Indigenous and feminist civil society organizations as part of their transnational advocacy to compel the Canadian state to address MMIWG. I show that state acts of omission and commission are intertwined and reinforce each other through a pattern of inconsistent, deficient, and contradictory institutional responses to violence against Indigenous women and girls.