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“A Canadian government minister has suggested that as many as 4,000 indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered over the past three decades.
Patricia Hajdu, minister for the status of women, said research from the Native Women’s Association of Canada put the figure much higher than the 1,200 mentioned in a 2014 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Earlier, the indigenous affairs minister, Carolyn Bennett, said indigenous communities told ministers in the run-up to an inquiry about the missing women that the number was “much higher than 1,200”.
Bennett said the RCMP “did their very best” in trying to come up with an accurate number but the testimony she heard put that figure in serious doubt.
“I don’t have the data, but I know the problem is not about us fighting about the numbers. The problem is making sure that these families that lost a loved one, these survivors that are still living, that their stories lead us to the kind of concrete actions that will actually put an end to their vulnerability and what has been going on,” she said.
Bennett said many families of missing or murdered indigenous women wanted police to dust off cold cases, or launch investigations into the fate of the missing.
Hadju said a lack of hard data made it almost impossible to reach an accurate figure but 4,000 could be correct because of a history of police underreporting murders or failing to investigate suspicious deaths.”
– The Guardian, Missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada could number 4,000.
“The government must be pressured to hold good on its promises. The last thing needed is another fruitless study: 40 have already been conducted. Of the 700 recommendations for government action that emerged from the research, 99 percent were ignored. It is clear that any inquiry must be accompanied by active follow-through. This should include scrutiny of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) apathy toward women who file domestic violence reports, and long-standing charges of sexual harassment and violence by the RCMP against indigenous women. (The RCMP is also being investigated for treatment of women in its own ranks. Hundreds of female cops have complained of sexual harassment on the job.)
Pressure for the inquiry came from many sources, including new Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, a leader of the New Democratic Party, who decried Harper’s years of indifference and issued an official apology for generations of forced assimilation policies by the Alberta government. Notley vows to address the causes of the violence.”
– TruthOut.org, Canadian First Nations Demand Action on Missing and Murdered Women.
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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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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
