K'JIPUKTUK (HALIFAX) – Friday, May 10th, marked the fifth year anniversary of Millbrook First Nation band member Tanya Brooks' death. Despite a $150,000 reward offered by the Halifax Police Department for information leading to solving the case, the killer or killers are still at large. Murmurs that intersect community lines suggest that a variety of people know the answers to Brooks' murder, but that fear of reprisal has shuttered their mouths.

“We strongly believe that there are people in the community that have information that is key to this case,” said Deputy Chief of the Halifax Police, Bill Moore, in a refrain that has become common to the Brooks case. “We're asking them to please come forward. This is a case we believe we can solve if the right people come forward with information.”

In many ways, the murder of Tanya Brooks has sadly come to represent a local example of the endemic, crisis of Indigenous women gone missing and murdered across colonial Canada.

Demands for a national inquiry for missing and murdered Indigenous women also reverberated through the now-yearly memorial march in honour of Brooks. Relative inaction on the part of the Harper regime in addressing the issue was, however, understood by some in attendance as being less a matter of the masses not yelling loud enough and more a matter of being in lockstep with the prime directive of the national, colonial, mythology; never look the ongoing Canadian attempt at First Nations' genocide straight in the eye.

“I think [an inquiry] will uncover more than we want it to uncover,” said Du'ma Christmas, teacher at the Mik'maq Native Friendship Center. “What I'm concerned is about the justice that will be done for the missing women and men that were killed.”

As the march for Tanya Brooks ended outside the Halifax police station, many in attendance wept along with the immediate family.

“When we do these walks we raise the awareness that we're still waiting for answers,” said Dorene Bernard, member of women's traditional drum group 'All Nations Drummers'. “Just like Connie and her family and her children. Her children are here today. They're looking for answers. There's family and friends that are still carrying a burden. They're still grieving. And they want answers and closure and justice for Tanya.”