Indigenous women’s groups urge funding to limit risks to safety, prosperity

OTTAWA – Advocates are calling for long-term, stable federal funding to safeguard Indigenous women and girls — and are warning the federal government’s major projects push could place them at higher risk.

Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, president of the National Family and Survivors Circle, said groups like hers still don’t know if they’ll receive continued funding from Ottawa. She said that uncertainty undermines their efforts to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

“When we’re looking at the safety and human security of Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit and gender-diverse people, it’s really critical that organizations who are doing this important work — and even through the lens of prevention and economic participation — that they receive long-term, sustainable and equitable funding,” she said.

“They’re severely underfunded. There’s a real power imbalance.”

Anderson-Pyrz is expected to join the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak, Giganawenimaanaanig and NDP MP Leah Gazan on Parliament Hill Wednesday to call for continued funding for programs and services.

Anderson-Pyrz told The Canadian Press the federal government must take action to protect Indigenous women and girls — especially as it ramps up plans for resource extraction and infrastructure projects that could put them in harm’s way.

Amnesty International has reported that binge drinking and drug use among transient resource sector workers, combined with high housing prices and a shortage of childcare services, can lead to the exploitation of Indigenous women and girls and make it harder for them to leave abusive relationships.

A recent report drafted by the Ontario Native Women’s Association for the United Nations Human Rights Committee says Canada’s justice and social systems continue to fail Indigenous women and girls.

“Our lives continue to be devalued and our safety dismissed by governments and by the very systems intended to protect the people of this country,” the report says. “Canada’s continued inaction is a form of systemic discrimination and structural violence against Indigenous women.”

A 2019 inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls concluded Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than their non-Indigenous counterparts.

The final report was culled from the testimony of more than 2,380 family members, survivors, experts and knowledge-keepers brought together over two years to study the crisis and propose solutions.

Family members told the inquiry how intergenerational trauma and poverty compound the threats facing Indigenous women and girls, while knowledge-keepers described how women, through colonization, have been displaced from their traditional roles.

The commission brought forward 231 calls to action to address what it described as a genocide.

But in the seven years since that report’s release, little progress has been made on implementing those 231 calls to action. Anderson-Pyrz said the problem will only get worse without federal help.

“We’ve been fighting for decades to have our voices heard, to have our lives treated like they matter. And it’s really challenging in this country to be able to do that,” she said.

“And it’s ultimately heartbreaking when governments say to the world that Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and gender diverse peoples’ lives don’t really matter, that we have to fight for spaces to have our inherent and human rights upheld.”

Gazan said in a media statement Indigenous Peoples already stand to be left worse off after planned cuts to federal Indigenous departments, and organizations like Anderson-Pyrz’s need support to “end this crisis of violence once and for all.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2026.