One in Three Women

'Stolen Sisters': Murdered and missing in Canada
by: Stephanie Woodard
Posted: November 29, 2004

Indigenous women in crisis

OTTAWA, Ontario - Over the last two decades, some 500 indigenous women in Canada have been murdered or are missing and feared dead, according to ''Stolen Sisters'', a report recently released by Amnesty International. ''Discrimination and violence against indigenous women is Canada's untold human rights issue,'' said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

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The yearlong process of researching and writing the report included a healing ceremony at the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario for those who had lost daughters, sisters and mothers. ''Elders there shepherded us through the two-day process,'' Neve said. ''Many families felt betrayed by government and had little reason to trust outsiders or officials. We wanted to proceed in a way that was conscious of their needs.''

No one knows exactly how many women have disappeared or died, according to Beverley Jacobs, Mohawk, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), which cooperated in the preparation of ''Stolen Sisters.'' This is partly because Canada keeps incomplete records of the ethnicity of victims and perpetrators of crimes, and partly because indigenous people have become so suspicious of the police that they do not necessarily report incidents. Government statistics do estimate, however, that indigenous women between 25 and 44 are five times more likely than other Canadian women of the same age to die as the result of violence.
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