Everyone who cares about the life-threatening discrimination that Indigenous women and girls face in Canada is deeply worried now about the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The Inquiry has suspended meetings, and some advocates have issued an open letter expressing concerns about the Inquiry's faltering beginning.

One of the concerns is that, so far, the Inquiry's efforts to reach out to family members, and survivors of violence, have been confused and ineffective. This is a threshold problem, since hearing from family members is vital to the Inquiry's work.

We also have to be concerned, however, about whether the National Inquiry will be a robust mechanism for examining the facts and holding governments to account for their failures to...