OTTAWA\u2014It took the disappearance of a cousin to bring Holly Jarrett and her estranged mother together after a year of silence.<\/p>\n
After Loretta Sanders went missing, her mother called Jarrett and pleaded with her to make up with her mom.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe explained that we\u2019re a family, and Loretta knew my mom and I didn\u2019t talk, and she would be very happy when she came home to know that such a good thing had come from her being missing,\u201d Jarrett said Wednesday at a Parliament Hill vigil for her cousin, a 26-year-old Inuit student who vanished from Halifax Feb. 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve talked to my mother every day since.\u201d<\/p>\n
The day after Jarrett reconciled with her mother, Saunders\u2019 body was found on the snow-covered median of a New Brunswick highway.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeft there, a young, promising, talented, contributing aboriginal citizen of our country, of my community and my family, left on the side of the road,\u201d said Jarrett as she choked back tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur precious little girl who fought for justice for the very silent population of girls she\u2019s now a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saunders was an honours student at Saint Mary\u2019s University when she disappeared. Two people have been charged with first-degree murder in her death.<\/p>\n
One of them, 25-year-old Blake Leggette, appeared recently in a provincial court. The other, Leggette\u2019s 28-year-old girlfriend, Victoria Henneberry, did not appear in court and was instead represented by her lawyer.<\/p>\n
In a cruel irony, Saunders was writing a thesis on murdered and missing aboriginal women before she died.<\/p>\n
Cheryl Maloney of the Nova Scotia Native Women\u2019s Association, who spoke at the vigil, said she grappled with the question of who, if anyone, should finish Saunders\u2019 work before coming to a realization.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it wasn\u2019t up to one person to finish Loretta\u2019s thesis,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe it was up to all of us as Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maloney and others at the vigil called on the Conservative government to hold a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.<\/p>\n
But while the Conservatives renewed funding to combat violence against aboriginal women and girls in their recent budget, they have so far resisted calls for a formal inquiry.<\/p>\n
It is estimated there are hundreds of cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women dating back to the 1960s.<\/p>\n
A United Nations human rights investigator called that statistic disturbing last year during a fact-finding visit to Canada in which he also urged the Conservative government to hold an inquiry.<\/p>\n
James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said a national inquiry would ensure a co-ordinated response to the problem and allow the families of victims to be heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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