WINNIPEG -- Family members of a 16-year-old Indigenous girl who was found frozen to death behind an auto body shop in Winnipeg says they do not want her death to be in vain.

Relatives of Nicole Daniels were the first to testify as the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women opened four days of hearings in the Manitoba capital.

Daniels was found face down in the snow in April 2009, the morning after, her family says, she had gone out with a middle-aged man she had met on a telephone chat line.

An autopsy showed she had a high level of alcohol in her system and died from hypothermia.

The police ruled out foul play.

Her aunt, Joan Winning, says the teen's clothes were undone, and that -- along with other factors -- leaves the family convinced that she was murdered.

Nicole's cousin, Isabel Winning, told the hearing society sees Indigenous women as disposable and that has to change.