Missing native women should be national priority
An open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
I’m a Grade 8 student in Nova Scotia. I’m writing to you to ask for your help as the leader of our country in addressing the disappearance of Indigenous women.
Between 1980 and 2012, according to the RCMP, 1,200 Indigenous women disappeared or were murdered. However, Indigenous women’s groups state the true number is more than 4,000.
Before looking at the issue itself any further, this difference in numbers is cause for real concern. How could there be such a gap between what native communities themselves report and what our national police force reports? Could such a gap exist for any other ethnic group without furious protests from the public? If the missing women were from a wealthy, non-native community like Oakville or Kanata, and the authorities did not know the actual number of missing women, it would be a national outrage. Prime Minister Trudeau, what has happened is an outrage. The life of a girl from a reservation in Manitoba or the Yukon or Nunavut is every bit as precious and irreplaceable as the life as a millionaire from downtown Toronto.
We have to do better, and we need you to do better for us as the leader of our country. I ask that you make this issue a true national priority that we address with more than words.
We know that there is a strong correlation between violent crime and poverty. When you became prime minister, you promised to take meaningful steps to address poverty in Indigenous communities. Yet here we are, years later, and tens of thousands of Indigenous Canadians continue to live without even the bare necessities of life. Thousands don’t even have access to clean drinking water.
If we don’t make fixing those problems a priority, should we be surprised when thousands of native women can disappear without most Canadians even noticing? We need you to back up your words with action. Poverty in native communities must be reduced and the loss of life among Indigenous women must become a rallying cry for Canadians of all backgrounds.
I will be waiting eagerly to see what steps you will take to ensure that the ongoing tragic loss of Indigenous women’s lives stops being a negligible crime in our society. Lily Habinski lives