Perpetrators mostly indigenous, RCMP says
Seventy per cent of the perpetrators in Canada’s cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women are indigenous, the RCMP commissioner has confirmed.
The suggestion was first made last month by Bernard Valcourt, the aboriginal affairs minister, in a private meeting with First Nations chiefs in Alberta. Aboriginal leaders questioned the veracity of the number because a report last year from the RCMP about those cases did not specify perpetrators’ ethnicity. But in a letter made public Thursday, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said data obtained from 300 police agencies “has confirmed 70 per cent of the offenders were of aboriginal origin.”
However, the letter, addressed to Bernice Martial, grand chief of the Treaty No. 6 First Nations, stressed it is not the ethnicity of offenders that is relevant to investigators, “but rather the relationship between victim and offender that guides our focus with respect to prevention.”
Paulson said the force previously chose not to disclose this data “in the spirit of bias-free policing” and because such disclosure had the potential to “stigmatize and marginalize vulnerable populations.”
The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network first reported last month that Valcourt had shared the unpublished information during a March 20 private meeting in Calgary with First Nations chiefs. “I will tell you, because there is no media in the room, that the RCMP report states that up to 70 per cent of the murdered and missing indigenous women issue stems from their own communities,” Valcourt reportedly said, according to a news release issued later by the Treaty No. 6 First Nations. Aboriginal leaders called on the RCMP and Valcourt to share what information they had.
A report released last May by the RCMP stated 1,181 aboriginal women and girls were murdered or went missing between 1980 and 2012. The report said 62 per cent of the homicide victims were killed by a spouse, family member or someone they were intimate with. It did not delve into the ethnicity of offenders.
“We had never intended to publicly discuss the ethnicity of the offenders. Rather, our focus has been on the relationship between the victim and offender, which has pointed our prevention efforts to familial and spousal violence,” deputy commissioner Janice Armstrong said in an email to the National Post earlier this month.
Areluctance to discuss the ethnicity of those behind the disproportionately large number of aboriginal women being murdered in Canada can only thwart those searching for solutions to the tragic situation.
It appears political correctness has been behind an RCMP decision, up to the present, not to make reference to the ethnicity of possible perpetrators. The same reluctance seems to have prompted Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt to avoid revealing publicly all the government apparently knows about the murders.
As the RCMP prepares to release next month a followup report on murdered and missing aboriginal women, it has come to light that some 70 per cent of the 1,182 aboriginal female victims counted by the force between 1980 and 2012 were killed by aboriginal males.
According to a news report last week, a transcript of a March 20 conversation in a Calgary hotel room has the Aboriginal Affairs Minister confiding to several native chiefs: “I will tell you — because there is no media in the room — that the RCMP report states that up to 70 per cent of the murdered and missing indigenous women issue stems from their own communities.”
The reaction to the transcript revelation immediately prompted Grand Chief of Treaty Six Bernice Martial to dispute Valcourt’s assertion.
Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party aboriginal affairs critic Niki Ashton charged the government is “engaging in race baiting ... and absolving themselves of any responsibility to deal with this at the broader level.”
Such reactions are off base. If it is indeed the case that aboriginal men are mainly behind the murders of so many aboriginal women, such knowledge is bound to be tremendously helpful in devising strategies to address this devastating situation. The aboriginal communities calling for a national inquiry have been crying out for workable strategies. How can effective remedies be found if they are not prepared to face the circumstances of those deaths, whatever those circumstances may be?
If women in indigenous communities are dying at the hands of their partners or family members, why wait a year or more for a national inquiry to inform the public of such a fact? It is high time government sat down with the aboriginal communities and considered ways to address the violence. This is not the only avenue to be taken, given that the numbers suggest 30 per cent of the women may have been murdered by non-aboriginals. But it certainly is an important one, and suggests the aboriginal communities themselves must take greater ownership of the issue. Not all problems can or should be solved by governments taking a paternalistic role.
What has to happen next is a candid discussion about the RCMP’s findings regarding the ethnicity of all those suspected of murdering indigenous women.