Good for you Donna!

http://www.anishinaabe.ca/bgc/index.php/tag/missing-aboriginal-women/

It is not that Canada is unaware of the situation. Two years ago, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women issued this statement: “Hundreds of cases involving Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention.”

Now is election time and it’s important that such a large number of missing Indigenous women does not go ignored.

For it is Stephen Harper’s Conservative government that was responsible for the demise of NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit. On Friday Oct. 29, 2010, the federal government announced the end of (by lack of funding) the Sisters in Spirit (SIS) program, an announcement made by MP Rona Ambrose.

As defined by its creator, NWAC, SIS was: “a research, education and policy initiative driven and led by Aboriginal women. Our primary goal is to conduct research and raise awareness of the alarmingly high rates of violence against Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.”

Instead, the Conservative government has pledged $10 million in funding to develop a national police support centre for missing persons [Note: unlike the SIS database, this new initiative won't focus solely on Indigenous women] and unidentified remains that won’t be operational until 2013 at the earliest.

copyrighted:
Welcome to Anishinaabe.ca

Ahneen-Boozhoo, kina. M’zhaakwaat n’diznikaaz. Migizi dodem. My name is Bob Goulais. I am from the Nipissing First Nation...

One of the government’s stipulations in removing the funding was that NWAC could no longer use the name Sisters in Spirit. In response, members of Sisters in Spirit formed the group Families of Sisters in Spirit, who continue to help organize events to promote awareness around missing and murdered aboriginal women. This year, 51 vigils have taken place.

Ellen Gabriel, former president of the Quebec Native Women’s Association, said the government’s decision to move the funding from NWAC to the RCMP was especially problematic.

“[The RCMP are] the ones, the culprits, who have, through their apathy, done nothing to improve this situation,” said Gabriel.

“More financial and human resources need to… look at the policy development, policy review, and empower the aboriginal women’s groups to examine their issues,” he said.

Rolbin-Ghanie noted that media and other institutions are starting to note the systemic nature of the problem, not “just isolated incidents of violence.”

“The pillars of Canadian society, what we consider to be integral, like the court system, the media, the government, and the police forces are definitely still profound contributors to the problem in a number of ways. So there’s still a lot of work to be done,” she added.

http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/1891

The stories of murdered and missing indigenous women haunt reservations across Canada.

"Every week we are hearing about a new case somewhere in the country," says Maya Khamala Rolbin-Ghanie, who's helped spearhead a new grassroots campaign called Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. "There have been five or six cases of missing women in the last year alone in Quebec."

Activists involved in the campaign point to systemic negligence by the state and police authorities in dealing with crimes against First Nations women, a tragic reality that Rolbin-Ghanie says has come to haunt Canada's human rights reputation globally.

Discussions should include policing and government inaction, issues of poverty and dispossession and the legacy of systemic oppressions that contributes to indigenous women's vulnerability.

For more information, visit www.missingjustice.ca.

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

The group is working to change that and started its own database based on 250 variables, including demographics and suspect info.

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, and were under the age of 30. Most died or went missing from urban areas and, contrary to common belief, not all of them were sex workers.

What the report found was that aboriginal women continue to be the most at-risk group for violence in Canada.

While aboriginal women make up 3% of the population, they represent 10% of the reported homicides, almost 50%of which are unsolved. By contrast, the overall clearance rate for homicides in Canada is 84%.

The homicide rate for aboriginal women is almost 7X greater than non-aboriginal women.

Since 1974, there have been 393 known murders of aboriginal women — over a third of them occurring in last decade. Another 115 women are missing, with 21 suspicious deaths, and 53 unknowns.

Over two thirds of the cases came from the western provinces, with British Columbia having the highest number of known cases at 160. Ontario, for example, has 70 cases.

Saskatchewan, with its 61 cases, has the highest clearance rate — 78 per cent have been cleared by a charge — for any province or territory with more than 15 cases. Advocates believe more study into that province’s policies is necessary, and could help women in the rest of Canada.

Last year when the United Nations reviewed Canada's Human Rights Record, violence against Aboriginal Woman was cited as a key area other nations viewed as a stain on Canada's human rights record.

This made the news, just barely and was buried soon after. That is why the Canadian Government must act. The discrimination for Aboriginal People's is so bad that the international community is pressuring Canada to do the right thing.

Amnesty International’s Stolen Sisters Report

http://www.amnesty.ca/stolensisters/amr2000304.pdf

List of missing, murdered aboriginal women in Canada grows

http://www.missingjustice.ca/2010/04/list-of-missing-murdered-aboriginal-women-in-canada-grows/#more-729

There are neighborhoods in every city where "Canadians" drive around
looking for "sex with children."

Twenty years ago, Jane Ash Poitas( Cree
artist/activist) got "fed up" with the lack of police response dealing with
Canadian "johns" trolling Aboriginal neighbourhoods so she started painting the johns' licence plate #'s on the street.

While working in Indian Government in Ottawa from 1986-94 -I remember when the World Council of Indigenous Peoples ( WCIP) organized conferences worldwide to gather concerns to present to United Nations some of which were:

1) melting icecaps & all that entails;

2) clearcutting of forests & the ensuing mining corporations = alcohol,
disease, porn, prostitution to the surrounding Indigenous peoples before the development of hydro-electic dams & total destruction of the land & dispora of the people;

3) the capture & release of Indigenous peoples for blood samples;

4) the return of artifacts & bones in museums or at the very minimum the agreement to see "who " were in the drawers...

5) & the disappearance of Native women in the Americas.
(www.missingnativewomen.org)

Since I worked in Indian gov't I knew about the "Highway of Tears" in
northern B.C. where Aboriginal women have disappeared so far with no real investigation by the RCMP. (www.highwayoftears.ca/missingbclist.htm)

Then again my dad informed me about Canada's "sextrade" in grade six as a precaution against hitchhiking let alone getting "caught" by gangs of Canadian guys "lookin' for some fun".

I also read a book about the sex trade in Canada -Raven's Journey- I think it was called, from B.C. Pretty much what my father told me in 6th grade.
(http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volume.html...see Vol.2)

Members of the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women (IAAW) in Edmonton began to hear stories from Aboriginal women about how they got involved in sex work after publishing their 2006 Crime Against Aboriginal Women report, says Daniels, a former policy analyst for IAAW.

“There was so few of them who had consented. There were so few of them who got any support to even recognize that they had been domestically trafficked,”

Given the total lack of statistics gathered on domestic trafficking in this country, it is no wonder there is nothing to accurately illustrate exactly how many Aboriginal people are being trafficked.

But this is what is known:

- According to research conducted by gang expert Michael Chettleburgh, 90% of the teenaged, urban prostitutes in Canada are Aboriginal.

- About 75% of Aboriginal girls under 18 have been sexually abused, says Anupriya Sethi, who has researched the issue. Of those, half are under 14 and nearly a quarter are younger than seven.

“According to the Department of Justice and other witnesses, Aboriginal girls and women are at greater risk of becoming victims of trafficking within and outside Canada,” notes the February 2007 report on human trafficking from the Standing Committee on Status of Women.

The report noted accounts from several experts about poverty, abuse and poor living conditions driving Aboriginal women into trafficking.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2008/09/29/6916776-sun.html

The report noted accounts from several experts about poverty, abuse and poor living conditions driving Aboriginal women into trafficking.

“Basically their handlers start them in Vancouver,” Chantal Tie, a lawyer with the National Association of Women and The Law, told the committee.

“They work for them there for awhile, then they’re sold to someone in Winnipeg and then to someone in Toronto, and so on down the line as they get moved around the country.”

The RCMP’s National Aboriginal Policing Service wanted to examine the issue further, the report noted, but lacked the funding and human resources to do so.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2008/09/29/6916776-sun.html

Summary

The historical problems of many Aboriginal peoples stem directly from assimilation, which fundamentally changed the economic, political and social life - indeed the very culture - of First Nations people. Assimilation policies were based partly on the European belief that Aboriginal people were uncivilized and incapable of governing themselves. As a result of the devaluation of their language, traditions, and customs after this experience, Aboriginal people began to suffer cultural uncertainties. This cultural crisis can be linked to specific internal problems that currently plague Aboriginal communities including disproportionate levels of Aboriginal incarceration, poverty, unemployment, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and an absence of economic self-sufficiency and business infrastructure.

http://www.ccja-acjp.ca/en/aborit.html

& for women
www.nwac-hq.org/en/documents/nwac-legal.pdf -

www.findmaisyandshannon.com ( two of our girls missing since Sept.08

National Clearinghouse on Family Violence
Emma D. LaRocque *

Permission is granted for noncommercial reproduction related to educational or clinical purposes.Please acknowledge the source.
ISBN 0-662-21483-8

Racism, Sexism,

Colonization and racism go hand in hand. Racism has provided justification for the subjugation of Aboriginal peoples. While all Aboriginal people are subjected to racism, women further suffer from sexism. Racism breeds hatred of Aboriginal peoples; sexism breeds hatred of women. For Aboriginal women, racism and sexism constitute a package experience. We cannot speak of sexual violence without at once addressing the effects of racism/sexism.

&

Amnesty International’s Stolen Sisters Report

http://www.amnesty.ca/stolensisters/amr2000304.pdf

&

Indigenous Women and Violence: a report by the Quebec Native Women’s Association

http://www.faq-qnw.org/documents/reportviolence2008.pdf

&

What Their Stories Tell Us: Research Findings from the Sisters in Spirit initiative

http://www.nwac.ca/sites/default/files/imce/2010_NWAC_SIS_Report_EN_Lite.pdf

meanwhile on the other side of the border...

SAVE Native Women Act Introduced

Senator AkakaLast month, Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) introduced the Stand Against Violence and Empower Native Women (SAVE Native Women) Act. The bill, S. 1763, would provide participating tribes with jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit certain crimes against Native women in Indian Country, improve the Native programs under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and improve data gathering programs to better understand and respond to sex trafficking of Native women. Senator Parick Leahy (D-VT) is expected to introduce a VAWA reauthorization bill before the end of the year, and supporters of the SAVE Native Women Act hope to see the life-saving provisions of S. 1763 reflected in VAWA’s reauthorization. To learn more about the SAVE Native Women Act, watch or read a summary of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs’ legislative hearing held on November 10.

http://www.indianlaw.org/content/action-alert-deadline-extended-submit-comments-stand-against-violence-and-empower-save-nativ

http://indianlaw.org/safewomen/take_action