WUNRN
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/06/canada-lost-women-150610131159600.html
Canada’s Lost Aboriginal Women
An investigation into the abuse and exploitation of aboriginal women in Canada and the authorities' failure to stop it.
Memorial to a missing Canadian aboriginal girl [Karim Shah / Al Jazeera]
10
Jun 2015 - Canada's aboriginal women make up a small fraction of its
population, yet for decades they have suffered disproportionally from abuse,
exploitation and murder.
Since the 1980s, over 1,000 indigenous women have been murdered
in this developed North American nation, yet, according to campaigners and
human rights groups, too few of these cases have resulted in arrests or
prosecution.
Amid
mounting claims of official indifference to the problem that some say has its
roots in racism and the country's colonial past, People & Power asks why police and the
government are not doing more to tackle crimes against Canada's first nation
females.
FILMMAKER'S
VIEW
By Sarah Spiller
Sharon Johnson has made the same walk for the past seven years.
On Valentine's Day, in the teeth of an Ontario winter, she marches to
commemorate her sister Sandra, murdered in 1992.
Woven into this and so very many stories of loss is the
question, why have so many of Canada's aboriginal women gone missing or been
murdered?
Aboriginal women make up little over four percent of the
country's female population, yet account for around 16 percent of female
homicides. Nearly 1,200 aboriginal women have disappeared or met violent deaths
in the country over the past three decades.
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Travelling across three provinces, People & Power heard allegations about the
police here, and arguments that the roots of violence against aboriginal
women can be traced back to a bitter colonial legacy. |
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Ontario |
This month Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported
on one of the darkest chapters in the country's history. The removal of over
150,000 aboriginal children from their families to residential schools, places
that became notorious for abuse.
On a drive through the Fort William First Nation Reserve outside
the Ontario city of Thunder Bay, former Chief Georjann Morriseau described how
this policy has impacted on generations, up until the present time.
"The residential schools were to take the Indian out of the
child. When your children get taken away you kind of lose your sense of
purpose," he says.
Leaving indigenous reserves, more problems could lie ahead in
Canada's cities, she said. "Thunder Bay ain't even that big. If you take
somewhere like Toronto and Vancouver, you're lost."
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In their home outside Toronto, John Fox shared pictures of his
daughter Cheyenne. A teenager giggling as the family cleared snow away; a
young mother cradling a newborn baby son. |
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John said
Cheyenne had lots of friends at school in Thunder Bay, was bubbly and sociable.
But when she moved to Toronto, her life was troubled. He says she was
assaulted, became homeless, and got involved in sex work to survive.
Cheyenne's body was found in a Toronto suburb in 2013. The
20-year-old had fallen from an apartment block. But for father and brother the
police verdict, that Cheyenne committed suicide, just does not seem possible.
"I think they disregarded her because she wasn't your
average Canadian woman," says her brother Jonathon. "The fact that
she was aboriginal pretty much threw her out, like garbage in a dumpster."
Toronto police told us their position was clear. They had done a
thorough investigation. Cheyenne's ethnicity played no role in their
investigation.
Manitoba
"When you find a 15 year old, wrapped up in a garbage bag,
disposed of, like they're garbage in a river, it effects us all – indigenous or
not."
In Winnipeg, in the Province of Manitoba, Bernadette Smith
described the death of another young aboriginal girl last August. A loss that
led the community here to take things into their own hands; to drag the Red
River running through this city in the hope of finding other remains, other
evidence.
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Bernadette says they had pushed police to do more, but they
were not willing to help community efforts. "That was the whole premise
of us doing this. Not having the confidence in them to find our women." |
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Bernadette's
own sister went missing in 2008, aged 21. The crime is still unsolved.
Nahanni Fontaine, an advisor to Manitoba's provincial
government, questions the years she says it has taken for families to have
their voices heard. Years when she maintains calls to address the
disproportionate numbers of aboriginal women disappearing or being killed,
simply fell on deaf ears. "Nobody cared."
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) finally produced their
findings last year: 1,017 aboriginal women were murdered from 1980 to 2012; 164
women went missing.
The RCMP would not be interviewed for our film. Nor did they
answer our questions.
British Columbia
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In Northern British Columbia, the RCMP is responsible for
policing vast areas of wilderness. Winding through this wild landscape is
Highway 16, connecting isolated communities, a road that has come to be known
as "The Highway of Tears". |
An RCMP
task force is investigating 18 cases of violent deaths and disappearances here,
dating back to 1969. Others have suggested up to 40 may have gone missing or
been murdered around Highways 16, 97 and 5, the majority young aboriginal
women.
Ramona Wilson, a bright 16-year-old student, went missing one
June night in 1994. She told her family she had plans to go to a graduation
party. Her murder too, remains unsolved.
"We just want to understand why there are no answers to
these young ladies cases," says Ramona's sister Brenda. "It’s not
acceptable to our families, and it's not acceptable to our communities that we
don't have the answers we need."
On top of
frustrations over unsolved crimes, People & Power heard
further disturbing claims about the use of excessive force in RCMP dealings
with aboriginal people in this province, and a fractured relationship with
indigenous communities.
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One activist told us: "I've had so many women say to me –
why would I ever call the RCMP?" |
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Calls
for an inquiry
In March
2015, yet another international report, from a UN expert committee, joined
voices calling for an inquiry into Canada's murdered and missing aboriginal
women. It is a call rejected by the country's prime minister.
And so the rallies, the marches, the questions, continue. The
stories told and re-told.
Before she walks, Sharon Johnson told us she prepares a feast,
goes out into the bush and makes a fire.
"I ask the spirits of all the women to come, to talk about their lives. I
ask them to come as I talk about my sister, as I tell her story."