I’ve never read anything about this problem before. Either I’m living under a bridge (entirely possible!) or this doesn’t make the US news all that often.
There are links in this story to other similar stories and I’ll be reading those next, but in the meantime what do you know about this issue?
It’s a very big issue currently in Canada. Anti-indigenous peoples racism is, IMHO, the biggest racism problem in Canada, and many of the families feel that little or no attention was given to their missing relative by the police. The current Liberal government has made investigating and resolving the issue a major political promise, and there is a lot of frustration over the lack of significant results so far. **Muffin **or Northern Piper may be in a better position to comment in depth, as I only know what I read in the news.
No it does not make the US news at all. Or at least, I have never read about it in the US press.
It has been an ongoing problem for at least the last five years or so.
I wish we could get at least a report about this, but so far, just more BS from the government.
It happens in the US too.
64,000 Black and Latino women are estimated missing.
Various groups missing
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/story/16110709/
But this thread isn’t about the US, it’s about Canada’s indigenous women.
As an American, I’ve heard about the issue, though it isn’t front and center. I might have heard about it because I live close to the Canadian border in a high-population-density area, or maybe on Twitter via Canadians I follow, or because I was researching the Cree a year ago.
Isn’t this situation the motivation behind the current movie Wind River? The movie is set in the U.S., but deals with the larger problem of the treatment of indigenous women.
We have an incredible amount of things to be sorry for in regards to treatment of indigenous people in Canada. We did things that are indistinguishable from ethnic cleansing. A missing indigenous woman was about the lowest priority for our law enforcement in a lot of cases.
There is the same problem down here in the US that Indigenous women go missing or are found murdered but no one talks about it.
https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/native-news/missing-and-murdered-no-one-knows-how-many-native-women-have-disappeared/ "Under VAWA 2005, a national study authorized by Congress found that between 1979 and 1992 homicide was the third leading cause of death among Native females aged 15-34, and that 75 percent were killed by family members or acquaintances.
And that horrific toll might actually be higher. “The number of missing Native women was not addressed in the study,” noted Jacqueline Agtuca, lawyer and policy consultant for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, (NIWRC). “Currently, we do not have adequate information on the numbers of missing Native women in the U.S.”"
valleydailypost.com “Last month, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined in introducing legislation led by U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and cosponsored by Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) to combat the epidemic of murdered and missing Native women and girls.”
Abso-fucking-lutely. I live and work in the north, and it’s far worse outside the major urban centers IME. I routinely have dealt with white Canadians who don’t honestly believe that the first nations count as people. The best (worst) example I can think of was a meme asking why we tested new drugs on lab rats when there were all those useless natives costing the government money on the reservations. This wasn’t sarcasm or satire either, it was just hatred dressed up as a meme.
On the other hand, don’t feel bad about not hearing about this in the States, because I’m pretty sure that they cover it as little as possible up here too. It makes white Canadians feel bad, and we can’t have that now, can we?
The most notable example IMO is probably The Highway of Tears murders. Officially there were 19 victims, but most First Nation groups place the number in the forties somewhere. Only one was ever solved, and it is widely believed the cops did little to investigate them due to systematic racism. Out of the 19 official victims, 10 were aboriginal women. The most damning part is despite the first murder taking place back in 1969, the first time they investigated any similarities between the cases was 2005. There was also a small scandal a couple years ago about how the provincial government “triple-deleted” emails about these murders to get around freedom of information requests.
If anyone is interested in learning more about missing aboriginal women, there was a excellent documentary on the subject made in 2006 called Finding Dawn, which is available free to watch on the National Film Board’s website.
How Canada as a nation has and continues to fail it’s Indigenous People is horrendous. There are a few places to read more about it:
Res Dress Project - a visual representation of how many women have gone missing: http://www.theredressproject.org
The call for an inquiry info Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: http://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/en/
For fiction - In Search of April Raintree and Half-Breed are both excellent.
Several years ago, they did a National Tour of the Truth and Reconciliations Commission to collect all of the stories about Residential Schools (Canada’s nearly successful attempt to wipe out First Nations): TRC Website - NCTR
Also, the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg has a fantastic collection on these issues.
There’s a terrible line about asking a Canadian why he’s not racist against black people. He replies that he saves his hate for Indians.
Most Canadians, especially those in the eastern half of the country, have very little contact with indigenous people: Indians tend to stick to reserves. In many cases, such as remote rural areas, that’s because there is nothing around and the reserves are fly-in/fly-out.
I currently live in Montreal which is pretty close to Kahnawake and Akwesasne. I’m generalizing, but there’s a fair amount of bad blood during certain encounters. Sports events have been boycotted, people hurl epithets. There have been standoffs, big and small, between aboriginals and developers.
Yet at the some time there are many Mohawk ironworkers taking part in the rebuilding of the Champlain Bridge, and plaques describing the killing of an aboriginal chief by Samuel de Champlain will soon be removed from Old Montreal (if they haven’t been taken down already).
It’s a slightly different matter out west, especially in BC which has many more reserves and aboriginal land. Check this map https://globalforestwatch.ca/sites/gfwc/files/images/20031110A_map2.png
Because of this non-aboriginal and aboriginal people are more likely to meet. There are many housing developments occupied by non-aboriginals sitting on 99-year-old leases on indigenous territory.
The University of British Columbia sits entirely within the territory of the Musqueam First Nation, and while I was there it was pretty normal to run into aboriginal people on campus, in classrooms, as school staff etc… It may seem somewhat banal to say this, but they’re just another ethnic group that’s part of the community.
On the other hand, for years Vancouver police refused to open an investigation into the disappearance of dozens of women because they were Indians. Dozens were killed by Robert Pickton, although he was only convicted of killing six.
Overall, Canadians know very little history about their own country. They know very little recent (ie. post WWII) history, and almost nothing about the residential school system. With any luck that will change.
