Skirting The Issue

"We remain committed to resolving all outstanding cases and seeking justice for families and friends of aboriginal women who have disappeared or who have been murdered."
"And we remain committed to reducing the violence against aboriginal women."
Deputy Commissioner, RCMP, Janice Armstrong

"It's by no means, on our part, to accord any type of blame to the victim with respect to discussing these vulnerability factors, but the reality is that there are difficult social and economic circumstances that need to be considered."
Superintendent Tyler Bates, RCMP director of aboriginal policing

"A national public inquiry is the only way to seek answers about the hundreds of indigenous women who have been been murdered or gone missing across the country, and to begin to bring closure and healing to their families and communities."
NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair

"We must continue to take concrete action now, not just continue to study the issue. Information gathering and discussions may help, but police investigations, new tools and techniques, as well as preventative, pre-emptive programming, are what deliver tangible results." 
Justice Minister Peter MacKay

Opposition parties in the House of Commons press the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to call an official enquiry into the missing and/or murdered women of aboriginal descent. The RCMP has released a report whose findings are that aboriginal women are overrepresented as victims of homicide and in the number of disproportionate-to-the-presence missing-persons cases. The report did not present startling new information; it simply validated what was already well-enough known.

The government sees nothing to be gained by launching an official enquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women. Its cause for the most part is clear enough, but never ventured out loud in polite company simply because to do so would be to invite a tsunami of criticism over stating the bald fact that violence against women is endemic in the aboriginal community. It is mostly from among their own that aboriginal girls and women are violently and viciously abused.

And it is from within that community that a sea change in cultural practise must come. The brutalization of women, the neglect of children, high unemployment rates, collective psychic injury, alcoholism and drug addiction are all a manifestation of societies that have fallen into grave dysfunction. That Indian bands themselves have not launched an effort to turn this  cultural malaise around represents cause for an enquiry.

Women in aboriginal communities represent four percent of the Canadian population, while representing 16 percent of all murdered females between 1980 and 2012, and eleven percent of all missing females, according to the recently-released RCMP report. The RCMP has undertaken a new initiative; commanding officers in each of their divisions directed to review outstanding case files to focus on ensuring all avenues of investigation have been committed to, including DNA testing.

Funding allocated for family violence prevention is to be redirected toward high-risk communities to enable police to work with non-profit groups to mount community meetings and to help in the development of community-safety plans. "Vulnerability factors" must be addressed; specifically unemployment and substance abuse. Yet knowing all that, it is the tribes themselves that must focus on those vulnerabilities.

Living on remote communal properties in a reflection of heritage contributes to the alienation and lack of enterprise.

RCMP Report highlights:

• While homicide rates for non-aboriginal women dropped in time, the percentage of aboriginal victims rose, from 8 percent in 1984 to 23 percent in 2012.
• Aboriginal women are three times likelier to be a victim of violence than non-aboriginal women.
• 225 cases involving aboriginal women remain unsolved -- 120 homicides and 205 missing persons.

The RCMP's ability to solve homicides involving prostitutes had lower rates of resolvability --- 60 percent for aboriginal women in the sex trade; 65 percent for non-aboriginal women. Foul play was suspected in 105 of the unsolved missing -person cases. According to the report, 1,017 aboriginal females were victims of homicide since 1980, with another 164 aboriginal women missing.