I miss my mother today.
Our family buried her four years ago in a nice ceremony in a church in Leduc, Alta., and celebrated her life with laughter and stories in my dad's backyard afterward. It was a nice way to end what had been an ugly death from lung disease.
But my family was lucky -- we got that chance to say goodbye to my mom. As Beverly Jacobs, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, puts it, some families are still waiting for the phone call to tell them that their missing mother or child has been found. For these families, there is no end to their grief, no end to their worry.
Jacobs participated in a panel last Wednesday on missing and murdered aboriginal women, as part of the National Elizabeth Fry Week. Her organization is compiling a data base of more than 500 missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada. About half of these women are younger than 25. About half of these cases remain unresolved.
According to the Winnipeg Police Service, 12 families are waiting for the phone call to tell them their missing mother or daughter has been found. Of those 12 women, four are aboriginal. The program manager for Sage House, Gloria Enns, says that there are at least 21 unresolved murders of women in Winnipeg. For the folks at the Elizabeth Fry Society, these numbers are seen as an epidemic in a society that allows women to be victimized and discarded.
Many of these women have been marginalized by poverty, racism, homelessness and sexual violence. Many of them have been in the Canadian judicial system. The national director of the Elizabeth Fry Society, Kim Pate, suggested that in Canada we use the prison system as the default for dealing with our social issues, particularly as they relate to aboriginal women. We know that women in the judicial system have found themselves in jail after being left with few or no options. There is a serious lack of safe, affordable housing in Canada and we've done little to fight women's poverty.
Statistically speaking, aboriginal women face higher levels of violence including sexual violence and for many, alcohol and drug addiction helps stop the pain. Pate suggests that putting people in prison for long periods of time has become the snake oil of the 20th century. It's designed to convince the masses into believing that the system is working, when it really isn't. Crime is a symptom of the poverty disease no government seems willing to eradicate.
Yet, it costs $185,000 to house a woman in a federal prison for one year. If we spent that money on her housing, on providing her with mental health services, on ensuring she was sober and clean and had a safe environment in which to raise her kids instead, it would be far better spent.
One reason why governments at all levels can ignore this issue is because there is so little outrage. There are good victims and bad victims. Women with brown eyes and brown hair whose mug shots are used in media reports of their murders do not make good victims. They are not us and when we tell ourselves they are not us, we can feel a little bit safer. But they are still our sisters. And they are someone's mother and someone's daughter. And someone deserving of our outrage.
Fewer than six months ago, Canadians watched as serial killer Robert Pickton was sentenced to 25 years for murdering six marginalized women. He has been implicated in the murders of 20 other women. The Vancouver police has met with considerable criticism for ignoring reports of missing women in Vancouver's Downtown East Side for more than 20 years. When I asked the Winnipeg Police Service what lessons have been learned from the Pickton case, Insp. Bill Fogg suggested that it did serve as a wake-up call for his department and they are one of the few police departments with a dedicated Missing Persons Unit operating in Winnipeg. That's reassuring. The problem is getting the community in which they operate to trust the police. Many of the women who spoke at Wednesday's panel felt the police were the perpetrators as well and talked about the racism they experienced when trying to deal with the police system.
So what do we do? First, we need to stop thinking that building more jails and getting tougher on crime is actually going to solve crime. The current law-and-order paradigm may get votes, but it's not going to make Winnipeg a better place in which to live. Second, we need to start tackling poverty and a great place to start is by creating safe and affordable housing. It's not sexy and it may not win elections, but it will help create a better space.
Third, the federal government needs to take the recent auditor general's report seriously and look at how it's implementing child welfare services on reserve. As the auditor general points out, the current funding figures for child welfare are based on 1988 figures and overall, the services provided are not meeting provincial standards. This cannot be allowed to continue and it's shameful that in Canada we continue to ignore this issue.
Finally, we need to stop ignoring racism and misogyny. We need to get angry that so many women are not celebrating this Sunday with their families and that too many families are still waiting for that phone call to tell them where their missing daughter is.
Shannon
Sampert teaches politics at the University of Winnipeg and is on the board of the Elizabeth Fry Society.
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