THUNDER BAY -- At the halfway point of the federal election campaign, Ontario's First Nations chiefs have announced they won't wait to see whether the next government will call an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
They'll be leading one themselves.
Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day was in Thunder Bay only days after he made the announcement in Toronto, along with a fundraising campaign to raise the $500,000 chiefs expect they'll need to get started.
"What we're doing is getting in behind this call. We're doing things in the meanitme," Day said.
"It's a really important step launching the campaign for the fundraising but also to demonstrate to people that we're serious and we're not going to wait for any government. We're going to get that work done."
Day described the prospective campaign as having "all the makings of a formal inquiry." His office is working with the legal community to ensure witnesses can testify and broader trends can be identified that contribute to the 1,200 Aboriginal females who have gone missing across Canada since 1980. A website has already been lauched to connect families and help them tell their stories.
Day is ready to face whatever the truth might be. 
"One of those things is going to be family violence in our communities," he said.
"It has been stated that part of this occurs within our communities. Let's face it: if we're going to go into this process, we need to harness responsibility there as well. That's going to be a shared responsibilty across the board. We're also going to be faced with the fact that women that have left our communities have been lost, have been forgotten about."
Both the NDP and Liberals have announced if their parties form the next government, they will call a national inquiry. For Day, part of making the announcement before Canadians decide what the next government will look like is to ensure First Nations have a blueprint for how they want to engage in that process.
The inquiry would also provide evidence Day expects the chiefs would use to lobby government over policy and priorities.
"We can tie a lot of those social issues and ills that are happening in our communities back to family violence or un-dealt-with grief or un-dealt-with investigations that have been swept under the carpet," Day said.
"Clearly, many people experience post-traumatic stress as a result of issues of violence but our communities are going through almost a collective post traumatic stress and that's the result of colonial issues and racism as a result of the systems that are currently repressing our communities from doing this work."
