The mother of a murdered Saskatoon woman testified at the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls Thursday she’d like to see better access to interpreters.
“Without an interpreter, communication was difficult,” Carol Wolfe, who is deaf, told the inquiry via an interpreter. “I felt unheard and dismissed simply because they chose not to hear me.”
Her daughter, Karina Wolfe, disappeared in Saskatoon on July 2, 2010. About two weeks after the 20-year-old went missing, her mother went to the Saskatoon police station.
Wolfe told the inquiry she brought an image of her daughter and a note explaining she couldn’t find her to the station.
“He just looked and acted like it was not important. He ignored me. I was so angry as he was not helping me, I banged my hand hard on the counter. That is when he looked at me and handed me a witness statement,” Wolfe said.
After she filled out the statement, she said she was still unaware of what was happening with her daughter’s case.
“All I wanted and needed was to be notified that, yes, they have my report and, yes, they are looking for my only daughter,” Wolfe said.
Karina’s body was found in a ditch by the Saskatoon airport five years after she disappeared. Jerry Constant turned himself in to police and told officers where the body was located. He was eventually handed a life sentence.
Throughout the search, Wolfe’s liaison officer, Dorthea Swiftwolfe, was by her side.
Wolfe and Swiftwolfe’s communication was initially through writing, but eventually Swiftwolfe learned some sign language.
“Without Saskatoon Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, Carol being able to teach me sign language, to the extent I do know, we would have never gotten as far as we did,” Swiftwolfe told the national inquiry.
Swiftwolfe recommended that more services, like psychologists who can sign, also be available.
The MMIWG national inquiry is set to hear more stories, like Karina’s, in its next location in Maliotenam, Quebec.
