Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada

Violence against women is a significant societal issue and it is also a policing concern. According to the World Health Organization, it affects one-third of women around the globe and represents an ongoing health problem of “epidemic proportions.” The disappearances and murders of females in Canada are particularly problematic. This text will focus more specifically on the case of women of Aboriginal origin massively affected in this country as it defended by many organizations. The context will be clarified and supported by shocking facts. Further, the actions taken by all actors involved and solutions to this issue will be discussed.

For the purpose of this project, we will consider events that occurred from 1980 till 2012 in Canada. The actors mainly involved in this issue are the Indigenous people, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as well as the Canadian government. In this country, Aboriginal women are over-represented among murdered and missing women.  Effectively, knowing that Indigenous women represent 4.3% of the whole female population in Canada, the proportion of women victims of homicide during our focus time frame rises to 1,017 females, which represents 16% of all Canadian women homicides. However, even if their situation has been worrying over the last years, in 2010, Harper’s Conservatives cut funding to the Sister in Spirit research project that brought to light hundreds of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Fortunately, on a positive note, the actual Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the following on his website:  "We will immediately launch a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada, to seek recommendations on concrete actions that governments, law enforcement, and others can take to solve these crimes and prevent future ones." Besides, the RCMP works on the improvement of the data on missing Aboriginal women in order to make it more widely available after appropriate controls.

The actions taken are separated in two groups, because there are two major actions that have committed themselves to change the situation. The population, including activist groups, such as ‘’Missing Women’’, are working to find solutions to that issue. They made multiples demonstrations across Canada, they created a website to inform the population about that problem and that created awareness about that issue to the general public. They are doing that to promote community awareness and political action by using also popular education and direct action to make things happen. They are part of a solidary community that need support and immediate action to try to remove violence toward aboriginal women. They want to stop the killing.

On their part, the Canada government, through the RCMP, concentrated their effort on six majors points. They put more investigators to try to solve past unresolved cases by opening them again.  Second, they identified problematic areas were they will start intervention and education program to prevent violence towards women.  Third, they inject some extra funding into non-profit community groups that are working to prevent family violence in high-risk communities.  Forth, a national public inquiry was created to get answers and expose the government and police accountability in this issue. Fifth, a national action plan was drafted to address the issue and bring solution while following the results of the entire program. Finally, they instituted a regular and comprehensive collection of data through Statistics Canada to better understand the reason and links between the crimes. The government is doing all those things to try to repair their mistakes and failure in this issue. They want to prevent further killing and try to better understand the previous ones.

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