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“The head of the Native Women’s Association of Canada says she’s not surprised new numbers show aboriginal women are still more likely to be murdered than non-aboriginal women.
“This absolutely confirms what we’ve been saying about the targeting of aboriginal women in Canada,” said NWAC president Dawn Lavell-Harvard.
On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released homicide data from 2014 that shows while just five per cent of Canada’s population is aboriginal, nearly one-quarter of homicide victims that year were aboriginal people.
The department also released more details about aboriginal women who are murdered. Between 1980 to 2014, the data shows that of 6,849 female homicides, 1,073 were aboriginal women. However, because homicide rates for non-aboriginal women have dropped since 1990, the proportion of homicides in which of aboriginal women were killed has increased to 21 per cent in 2014 from 14 per cent in 1990.
The new statistics also reveal something advocates have increasingly been raising alarms about: aboriginal men are three times more likely to be killed than aboriginal women. In Manitoba, aboriginal men are nine times more likely to be killed than anyone else.
“The reality is the homicide rate for aboriginal men is much higher and has always been much higher,” said Neil Boyd, director of the school of criminology at Simon Fraser University.
“There’s a disturbing, unfortunate legacy, and it’s something that we all collectively need to put a good deal of effort into trying to resolve.””
– CBC News,
New homicide statistics no surprise to indigenous women’s advocate.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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