The Agony of Fearful Suspense

"My daughter has been missing for six years. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know what to do."
"Every day with her was a good day."
"Now they are telling me it may be a friend or even a family member who did this. That's what they are saying to all natives."
Bryan Alexander, Algonquin, Maniwaki resident

Maisy Odjick (left) and Shannon Alexander (right) disappeared without a trace in 2008. (Photos, courtesy of Odjick and Alexander families)

"[Aboriginal women represent about 16% of all female homicides --] far greater than their representation in Canada's female population [a statistic that has remained] relatively constant."
"The growing proportion of aboriginal female homicides is a direct reflection of a decrease in non-aboriginal female homicides."
"The most frequent motive in aboriginal female homicides was 'argument or quarrel'."
RCMP report

According to a detailed report recently made public by the RCMP, their investigations concluded that aboriginal women accounted for eight percent of female victims back in 1985; whereas by 2012 that figure had risen to 23 percent. The RCMP also points out in the report the reality that a person or persons responsible for the disappearance of First Nations girls and women come from among friends and family members.

That report gave a figure of over one thousand aboriginal females; teenagers and women, murdered over the past thirty years. Another 165 have disappeared and though missing, their fate is unknown. Accounting for roughly 4.3 percent of the nation's population, aboriginal women represent 16% of all female homicides. As the number of non-aboriginal female homicides have declined, the rate among aboriginals has risen.

In the vast majority of such cases the murdered girl or woman was killed by someone known to her, not a stranger. According to the report, an aboriginal girl or woman is often murdered by an acquaintance, a close friend, a neighbour, business relation or authority figure, more often than occurs with non-aboriginal women; 30 percent as compared to 19 percent.

They were two teen-age friends. Like all young girls they were looking forward to attending a dance on the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation reserve, north of Ottawa. Shannon Alexander and her best friend Maisy Odjick were discovered to be missing. No one had any idea what had happened to the two girls, and their disappearance remains a mystery.

At the time of their disappearance news reports of the mystery of their whereabouts gave hope that the girls would reappear, that perhaps they had gone off as young people sometimes do, and would return. That they had left home without taking their wallets, without money and debit cards was not a hopeful sign. They were last seen close to their homes, as they headed off for the dance where they were never reported to have been seen.

Bryan Alexander, 51, Shannon's father, hardly knows where to turn for comfort. He is anguished, as any parent would be, by the absence of his daughter whom he raised on his own. Initially, he had posted missing person signs. People, he said, kept tearing down those signs, so he stopped posting them.