Violent crime rates against indigenous women are alarming, and they often receive very little attention from law enforcement and the media. This fact has caused indigenous groups to work on their own to gain justice for the victims and bring awareness to the issue.
Violence against Indigenous Women
Indigenous women are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than all other ethnicities. However, they rarely receive justice for these crimes. These crimes, especially murders, and abductions, are often ignored and unsolved.
Lack of investigation is often due to communication, jurisdictional, and attention issues. Many of these crimes are ignored by law enforcement and media alike. Movements and organizations have been formed to help bring these victims the justice they’ve been lacking.
Crime Rates
The Urban Indian Health Institute put together a study analyzing the data of missing and murdered indigenous women from numerous cities. The study identifies 506 cases, but the report also clarifies that this is likely an undercount.
Murderers are the third leading cause of death among indigenous women. In 2016, 5,712 murdered or missing indigenous women and girls were reported, but only 116 cases were logged in the Department of Justice database. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that approximately 4,200 missing and murder cases have gone unsolved.
Statistics on violence against indigenous women are difficult to find in government databases due to it being underreported and undercovered by law enforcement. So many individual groups have done their own research.
Native Women’s Wilderness lists more statistics on their website pulled from outside research or government data. They found that 84.3% of Indigenous women have experienced violence and are 1.7 times more likely to experience violence than Anglo-American women. They also experience a murder rate three times higher than Anglo-American women. Non-Native people on Native-owned land commit the majority of these murders.
Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women
Many of these violent crimes and murders are ignored or unreported. National or international media never covered more than 95% of the reported cases. Many Indigenous founded, and run organizations have brought attention to this issue on their own. Many aim to raise awareness of the problem and help bring justice to the victims.
The red handprint over the mouth has become a powerful symbol of the movement. This symbolizes the “missing sisters whose voices are not heard. It stands for the silence of the media and law enforcement in the midst of this crisis. It stands for the oppression and subjugation of Native women who are now rising up to say #NoMoreStolenSisters.”
Indigenous people have been routinely ignored and forgotten by the federal government. This has led to an unprecedentedly high violent crime rate against them.
With the federal government still doing little to help them and stripping away more rights from indigenous groups, such as the SCOTUS case that could overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, indigenous groups have had to bring awareness to these crimes on their own to try and bring justice for the victims.
I am appalled and heartbroken over the inaction by our government when it comes to investigating cases of missing and murdered indigenous women. I am watching the Showtime series Murder in Big Horn and my heart is simply breaking. I also recently watched Wind River. I am ashamed that I knew so little about this horrendous epidemic of women going missing, being trafficked, being murdered… I would like to know how I, a 63-year-old woman in Northeast Ohio, can possibly help. Are there organizations you can direct me to? Anything like that. I would be ever so grateful.
How can any human being with an ounce of humanity justify a Cop picking up a NUDE female sexual assault victim in a parking lot in the middle of December in minus -30 degree Celsius in Alberta Canada, and instead of taking the victim to a hospital, the cop takes her to the local jail for the night, where the victim was assaulted once more, this time by two police officers as they tried putting a one piece suit on her. Although not sexually assaulted, she was assaulted regardless!
These two monsters with badges pulled out a handful of hair the size of softball on this woman’s head as she screamed “I don’t belong here, I didn’t do anything wrong”! The devastated victim was suffering from shock, and hypothermia, and had injuries consistent with sexual assault, and was no doubt lucky to alive, and not found dead in the nearby river, days, weeks, or months later, or never found at all !
The cop was so calloused when he picked her up in that parking lot that he left the interior lights on in his squad car so that all the people walking by could see the naked indian he had just captured! He didn’t offer her a blanket, or call a female officer, or nothing!
The cop would have been trained prior to graduation to recognize a victim in a state of shock, and would have recognized the psychological injury of the victim’s mind when questioning her, and asking “do you want to lay charges”? The victim knowing how the courts re-victimizing rape victims said “no’! For this Cop to not have just call an ambulance is just inexcusable. It’s despicable. A sign that he failed in his duty to serve and protect. His failure was deliberate , calloused and wicked.
Why did he fail ? RACISM!
Because the victim was an “Indian”!
Had the victim been a blonde haired blue eyed white woman the cop would no doubt have called an ambulance, because he would have recognized her state of shock, and would have already known her mentally incapacity to make the decision to go Court as she shivered in the back seat of his cop car while trying to hide from people walking by! Not only had she been sexually asssulted, now she was then subjected to more humiliation and fear.
The victim had been drugged and lured the night before, and the next day a different cop took this woman to retrieve her clothes, and this Cop watched the rapist grope the victim and again did nothing to stop him!
This is how aboriginal people are treated by police in certain parts of Canada. By federal and city police!
Although aboriginal people make up less than 4% of the population of Canada the federal female prison inmates make up 49%.
It took years to have the murders and disappearance of aboriginal women addressed, it is all talk. Nothing will change, and police will continue to turn a blind eye to these victims.
Canada was convicted of GENOCIDE in regards to these missing and murdered aboriginal women according to international human rights violations.
Nothing will change, especially in the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The federal police called Royal Canadian Mounted Police had some of their female officers bring a class action lawsuit against some of them for sexual assault and sexual harrassment , so if they would treat their own white female police officers that way, and turn a blind eye, what chance does an aboriginal woman have in Canada?