WINNIPEG -- Just one of the many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women has left a Manitoba community divided, a family struggling with grief, and a mistrust of the justice system, the national inquiry into the issue was told Tuesday.
On its second day of hearings in Winnipeg, the inquiry heard about the ripple effects from the killing of Roberta McIvor -- a 32-year-old woman who was decapitated on the Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation northwest of Winnipeg on July 30, 2011.
"It's really hard on me still. I still sometimes cry myself to sleep at night," McIvor's daughter Justine Strong said, sobbing occasionally as she spoke.
"I try my best to be the best mother -- just like her -- because I know everything I did with my life, she'd be really proud of me."
Strong was 14 when she last saw her mother, who was going out for the evening to visit friends. McIvor's body was found the next morning -- her head on one side of a road, her torso on the other.
Authorities told the family the decapitation was inadvertent and caused by a seatbelt during a violent carjacking. Two teenage girls from Sandy Bay pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to two years in custody and one year of supervision in the community.
But the family immediately had doubts about how accidental the decapitation was. It occurred on the third anniversary of the death of Tim McLean, a young carnival worker who was beheaded by a fellow passenger aboard a Greyhound bus on a Manitoba highway in a case that made international headlines.
The family also believed others in the community of 2,500 were involved in the killing, perhaps by helping out the killers before or after. Suspicion and rumours grew. The family did not know who they could trust.
"My community was so split in half that people were hiding murderers within our community," the victim's cousin, Alaya McIvor, told the hearing.
"There are still a lot of unanswered questions."
The family was taunted, Alaya McIvor added. Strong said she left Sandy Bay right after finishing high school.
"I don't feel protected in the community and ... it just doesn't feel like home any more."
The inquiry was to hear later Tuesday about the death of Cherisse Houle, from Ebb and Flow First Nation -- a community 40 kilometres down the road from Sandy Bay. Her body was found in Winnipeg in 2009.
The Winnipeg hearings follow earlier gatherings in Smithers, British Columbia and Whitehorse. The inquiry has faced criticism from some families about delays, poor communication, a lack of transportation and accommodation support. One commissioner and some staff members have resigned.
Alaya McIvor told Tuesday's hearing she does not have faith in the process.
"You're failing us," McIvor said. "This is not what family members picture as a national inquiry."
Her remarks were met with some applause from the audience.
