The List Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women

The issue of violence against Aboriginal women is my chosen subtopic that strongly contributes to the history of Aboriginal women’s struggle for rights and identity in Canada. To search relevant newspaper articles for this topic, the databases that were used were Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, as well as Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies. The reason these two databases were chosen was because Canadian Newsstand offered articles from multiple newspapers in the country, therefore providing me with diverse news in different provinces other than Ontario. The article I obtained from Canadian Newsstand was Canada Called on to Stop Violence Against Aboriginal Women from the Leader Post newspaper in Saskatchewan. Lexis Nexus provided one article I

For the past forty years, women have been reported murdered or missing along the highway 16 corridor in Northern British Columbia. The 724- kilometer stretch of road from Prince George to Prince Rupert was given the name “the highway of tears”. In the documentary Highway of Tears by Matt Smiley, the focus of the documentary was to set out and find the root cause of the disappearances and murders and to shed light on the real issue of violence against women and systematic racism in the justice system. The documentary looks at true stories of women who have gone missing or have been murdered along the highway of tears. The documentary focuses on how the highway of tears is the core of a much larger problem of how the indigenous population has been treated since colonialism. (Smiley, 2015) This essay will focus on summarizing the documentary, showing the correlation between the injustice the women and their families have faced and the mainstream and critical theories of victimization, and provide a critical reflection.

For decades, there has always been a very precarious relationship with aboriginal communities and the criminal justice system, especially with issues of indigenous victimisation and over-representation within the custody of police and prisons and the history of colonisation. Over-representation is the disproportionate numbers in which indigenous people come into custody compared to the non-indigenous. Although the justice system has been working together in order to overcome these deep-rooted issues and eliminate any negative associations with indigenous communities. This essay will outline the relationship between aboriginal communities and the police, the concerns associated with this relationship, why they are over-represented in the criminal justice system and the efforts that have been made to prevent this accumulating in the future.

In Canada, there has been an on going concern in the matter of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Although many First nations individuals have many barriers placed upon them by society, the government and many other institutions. Indigenous women face many of these barriers very harshly. Aboriginal women are vulnerable to many different forms of abuse because of not only being female but also due to issues such as poverty. First nations citizens have been faced with extreme difficulties throughout every aspect of their lives. These difficulties ultimately include the discrimination they face daily from police services, lack of resources in order to assist their need, etc. There have been many problems which have lead up to the social problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women which include the historical upbringing of our First nations population, and unfortunately through recent factors as well. Theories like the feminist theory assist in the debunking of this problem and give us a brief insight into the situation. To this day, the very serious issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is a key issue, which has been left with many cases unsolved. This in part clearly demonstrates the lack of efforts put in place by Canadian police in order to combat this problem. A case, which raised serious problems in North America, is the case of Lisa, a young Metis woman who at the age of fifteen disappeared walking home from a shopping trip, to which she was never found.

Imagine a normal day. You wake up, you get ready, you probably see your mom, wife or sister. You say goodbye and head on your way. Once home, you sit down with them and talk about your day. When sad they comfort you, they love, support, care for you. Now imagine you wake up one day and they have disappeared without a trace. Gone. You are heartbroken. This is a sad reality for many Indigenous families, many women are vanishing without a trace. Between 1200-4000 Indigenous women have been missing or murdered in the last 30 years. These women are often targeted and treated as being worthless leading to little support from police and the public. After being immersed into this issue I learned lots, but I was left feeling sad,

We are learning that when genuine 'Indigenous' Justice is hiding under the cloak of Western paradigms, we continue to see the rising population of Indigenous peoples--especially Indigenous women--in prisons. Our programs and rehabilitative initiatives remain under Western paradigms, even when painted with the brush of 'restorative' or 'indigenous'

How often do we stop to think about the minorities of this country and how they become involved and are treated in the criminal justice system? I surmise; only some of us will concern ourselves with such details. For some like myself; we might work with individuals of the Aboriginal community or have interacted with members of this group whether through school or work. Canada “had an Aboriginal identity in 2011 of 4 % or 1.4 million people” (Kelly-Scott and Smith, 2015). Of this total there is a gross overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Canada’s Criminal Justice System. This overrepresentation of Aboriginals in the CJS comes as a result of socio economic factors, sentencing reforms, systemic discrimination, education and employment and victimization of Aboriginal women. In partial fulfilment of this course, this paper will address the leading factors which has led to the overrepresentation of this group in the CJS.

Witnesses raised concerns of the non-response of police services to cases of violence against Aboriginal women. In domestic violence situations, police do not always respond in a timely manner to calls for assistance. Witnesses also stated that police sometimes dismiss claims of sexual assault if the woman is Aboriginal and leads a “high-risk” lifestyle.

There has been a significant body of literature which has attested to the veracity of the argument that black Canadians are victimized via racial profiling. For example, the Commission of Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System found that the majority of black respondents surveyed had been treated unfairly by the Canadian criminal justice system (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p.133-134). Furthermore, Canadian research studies have consistently revealed that blacks are more likely to come into negative police contact compared to Caucasians (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p. 135). Alarmingly, suspected black offenders are also more likely to be shot and experience use of force by Canadian law enforcement personnel than their white counterparts (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p. 138).

The film Highway of Tears brought to light many issues faced by Indigenous persons however, its main focus was the missing and murdered women found along Highway 16 in Northern British Columbia. Majority of the women who are missing as well as those who were murdered are Indigenous women. This film displayed that although there are ways to prevent and possibly end the violence against Aboriginal women, no action was being taken by police or other government agents to do so. It was discussed how this as well as other wrongs done to Indigenous persons and communities, is a result of past and present colonialism.

No community in Canada comes into conflict with criminal justice system officials more disproportionately than Aboriginals (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77). Indeed, Aboriginal Canadians are often subject to both overt and unintended discrimination from Canadian law enforcement due in large part to institutionalized reputations as chronic substance abusers who are incapable of reform (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77-78). One of the more startling contemporary examples of this is the case of Frank Paul; a Mi’kmaq Canadian who was left to die in a Vancouver alley by officers of the Vancouver Police Department after being denied refuge in a police “drunk tank”. Not surprisingly, this event garnered significant controversy and public outcry amongst

There is a major negative hole in the relationship between police and the indigenous community; Blagg and Cunneen both convey key relevant statistics that, display relative evidence of a negative relationship between the two groups. Both authors also state past strategies that have been used to identify these issues and work to heal the relationship. The authors also state present strategies that are being used and ideas that could help mend the relationship that has been torn apart between the two groups.

This essay endeavors to explain what risk factors are and discuss four key risk factors that may assist in explaining the over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system. These include family violence, alcohol and drug abuse as well as employment and

She argues that women face many institutional and societal barriers. In this regard, I will give examples of the institutional and structural barriers such as “The Indian Act” which have significantly affected Indigenous women in Canada in many ways including social, economic and political. While comparing feminists and Indigenous feminists, I think that Native women are different in several ways including social, cultural, historical, political and economic; therefore, Indigenous feminism is a way of practicing the values that they have been taught and inherited from their

In April 1995 Pamela George, an Ojibway women, was brutally murdered in Saskatchewan. Her murderers Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, young middle-class white men, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to merely six and a half years in prison. George’s story is one of the many Indigenous women who have been murdered or missing over the past years. There are over 580 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, close to half are put aside and left unsolved. Only 53% of these cases have lead to charges of homicide (Klement 8). Drastically, statistics indicate that Aboriginals are faced with more hardships throughout their life compared to the average Canadian. Indigenous groups, particularly women, suffer from a lower rate of education, higher suicide rates and an array of health risks. This paper will examine the role settler colonization history has played in perpetuating conditions for violence to indigenous women, many of which are still experienced today. This will be accomplished by first assessing the history of settler colonization and its negative repercussions. Secondly, it will use Sherene Razak’s concept of “spatial segregation,” to illustrate how state institutions have facilitated violence through space, race and the law. Lastly, this paper will use evidence from the film “Finding Dawn” to further demonstrate how violence towards indigenous women is institutionally produced.