The Ipperwash Inquiry was a two-year public judicial inquiry funded by the Government of Ontario, led by Sidney B. Linden, and established under the Ontario Public Inquiries Act (1990), which culminated in a four volume 1,533-page Ipperwash Inquiry Report released on May 30, 2007.

The inquiry was established by then-Premier Dalton McGuinty shortly after he took office after winning the Ontario general election on October 23, 2003. On November 12, 2003 the Liberals called for an inquiry with a twofold purpose, to investigate events surrounding the death of 38-year-old Dudley George, who was shot and killed by an OPP officer at Ipperwash Provincial Park in September 1995, and to make recommendations to prevent the escalation of violence like that which took place during the Ipperwash Crisis. According to the report, George was the "first aboriginal person to be killed in a land-rights dispute in Canada since the 19th century." The report found that "the appropriation of the Stony Point reserve by the Government of Canada in 1942 was unprecedented in Canadian history."

For ten years Dudley George's brother Sam George fought "for justice" calling for an inquiry into Dudley's death. In 2008, a year after the report was released, Sam George was inducted into the Order of Ontario. The man who nominated George, Wayne Samuelson, said that, "Sam George did not seek revenge – he sought justice. Sam is a man of peace, a shining example for us all. Debewin is the Ojibway word for truth. It means the truth is supposed to heal us all. That's what Sam set out to do."

In 2003 Amnesty International renewed its call for an inquiry. Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada said that "[e}Eight years is simply too long to wait for answer" and that governments at the federal and provincial level had "ignored their responsibilities" and defied a 1999 request from the United Nations. He added that this was "hurting Canada's efforts to pressure other countries on human rights and cited this country's dispute with Iran over the death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi as an example."

According to a 2015 history of the Ontario Court of Justice, for many years the family of Dudley George, especially his brother Sam George had called for an investigation, questions had continued to be raised in the Ontario Legislature, and journalists had continued their investigations. On November 12, 2003, the Liberal government that had just won the Ontario general election on October 23, 2003, under Premier McGuinty, called for an inquiry.

The hearings for the inquiry were conducted between July 2004 and August 2006 at Kimball Hall Forest Memorial Arena and Community Centre in Forest, Ontario. This location was chosen as it is less than 20 km from where the events leading to the inquiry occurred and because this location made it more convenient for the many local witnesses who testified to attend.

The public judicial inquiry was funded by the Government of Ontario under the Ontario Public Inquiries Act (1990). In the introduction of Volume 3 of his final report, Linden explained how public inquiries are "established by government, and their objective is to fulfill the mandate set out in an order-in-council, yet they are independent of government." He wrote that a "public inquiry can be called to uncover the truth about a specific matter... and to propose policy reform" as was the case with the Ipperwash inquiry.

It was led by a neutral third party, Sidney B. Linden, "pursuant to his powers as commissioner established under the Ontario Public Inquiries Act." The inquiry culminated in a four volume 1,533-page Ipperwash Inquiry Report released on May 30, 2007. The public inquiry was funded by the Government of Ontario but conducted by a neutral third party, Linden, was a neutral third party "pursuant to his powers as commissioner established under the Ontario Public Inquiries Act".