List of missing, murdered aboriginal women in Canada grows

OTTAWA – Over the past year, 62 names have been added to the list of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.

A total of 582 women – up from 520 last year – are now on that list; women who were mothers, daughters, wives and friends, with names including Amber, Beatrice, Georgina.

And there are probably more.

Not all of them disappeared last year – in fact, 27 did – but from about 1974 until now, few knew they were gone.

Over five years, the Sisters in Spirit initiative has sought to investigate who these women are and why they went missing or were killed. The project, founded by the Native Women’s Association of Canada through $5 million in funding from governmental agency Status of Women Canada, began with the assumption that there were 500 missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada.

That number keeps growing.

"It’s important to understand that this work does not end with 582. The database could continue to go on forever, really," said Kate Rexe, director of Sisters In Spirit.

On Wednesday, the association released a new report which focuses on causes, trends and circumstances behind missing and murdered aboriginal women.

What it found was that aboriginal women continue to be the most at-risk group for violence in Canada. While aboriginal women make up three per cent of the population, they represent 10 per cent of the homicides, half of which are unsolved.

The homicide rate for aboriginal women is almost seven times greater than non-aboriginal women.

Since 1974, there have been 393 known murders of aboriginal women – almost a third of them occurring in last decade.

And then there are the women who remain lost because authorities do not know they exist.

"There is a huge gap in the availability of data. In Canada, there is no one database where you can search missing and murdered (aboriginal women) together," said Rexe, in advance of the report’s release.

"You can’t really have a good understanding of what’s happening across Canada."

What is known is that aboriginal women are as likely to be killed by strangers as they are acquaintances. Most in the database were mothers, who died or went missing from urban areas and, contrary to common belief, not all of them were sex trade workers.

"It becomes this image where if an aboriginal woman goes missing or is found murdered, there is some connection made to the sex trade or high-risk lifestyle or this criminalization of the victim," said Rexe. "That’s not the case of what we have found in our research. There is no one profile of a woman that has gone missing or is found murdered. There’s also no one profile of the offender."

The organization depends on government funding for additional resources in prevention and victim services, she said.

She would like to see the $10 million in funding promised in the federal budget and secured by former status of women minister Helena Guergis to go toward programs such as victims services, or improved education for police to understand aboriginal issues.

"There’s been a real lack of access to justice up to this point, and as we have now provided the evidence for different governments, for communities, for service providers, for police and the justice system, to see that there really is this gap in availability and acknowledgment of the violence that is happening against aboriginal women and girls," said Rexe.

Details of the funding are to be announced at a later date by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, according to Status of Women Canada.

"Ending violence against aboriginal women is a priority of this government. It is also a shared responsibility of all levels of government, police, the justice system, aboriginal people, and civil society," said Nanci-Jean Waugh, a Status of Women spokeswoman.

Since 2007, through Status of Women Canada, the government has funded 150 projects, totalling $28.7 million that work to eliminate violence against women generally, said Waugh. She added that many of these projects addressed specifically the issue of violence against aboriginal women and girls.

It was recently announced that Status of Women, in partnership with the Native Women’s Association of Canada, will be working on new projects and initiatives building on the research gathered by the Sisters in Spirit project.