Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women

The RCMP has confirmed that they have accumulated in the past thirty years just over 1,100 cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women  (CBC). I would guess that the number is in fact still higher. This story is disturbing on a number of levels.

As a parent  I can only imagine the pain of a child disappearing with no one in a position of authority seeming to care about where they have gone. The sense of not knowing the fate of a child would inevitably cause a permanent tear in that family's narrative. I would suspect that it would be barely marginally better to know that that the child is dead. However the lack of official caring would both infuriating and crushing to the psych. The denial that there is a systemic problem must only add to the frustration and to the pain.

Of far greater concern is that lack of government response not just now but for the past 30 years. The present federal government makes the argument that their recent initiatives will resolve the problem; that there is not a need to investigate why, again according the CBC 

              " aboriginal women make up four per cent of Canada's population, they represent 16 per                cent of all murdered females between 1980 and 2012, as well as 12 per cent of all missing 

               females on  record. CBC"

Our present government seems to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that stricter laws and harsher penalties will make Canadians more law abiding. And that all that we need to do is to create better systems of managing the system and the problems will go away. While we should be concerned as to why these women were abducted and/or murdered, and what we can do to stop this level of violence, we also need to discuss as a nation why no one cared enough to raise the alarm as to what was happening. Or more accurately why when Aboriginal groups raised the issue again and again - no one listened.

It is important that we continue to refine systems/laws that address violence against women. But  I don't know how we can do that if we don't let the women most affected tell their stories.