Society Needs to Recognize Worth of Aboriginal Women

Summary

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The report highlights the tragic stories of Aboriginal women who have died at the hands of men who chose them as victims because of their own racist opinion that the life of an Aboriginal woman is worth less than that of a non-Aboriginal woman, or because of the racist attitudes of society that led them to believe they were more likely to get away with a crime committed against an Aboriginal woman because nobody would really care.

More needs to be done to ensure violent acts perpetrated against Aboriginal women receive the same police attention as cases involving non-Aboriginal people, advocates for Aboriginal women demand. And more needs to be done to address the poverty that forces Aboriginal women into dangerous lifestyles in the first place.

Even these changes won't be enough if there is no change in societal attitudes towards Aboriginal women. The police have to act as quickly on reports of missing Aboriginal women as they do when a non-Aboriginal woman is reported missing. The media has to give the same amount of coverage to all missing person's cases, regardless of whether the person who is missing is Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal. And the people of Canada have to show would-be perpetrators that they can't hurt Aboriginal women with impunity because we do care, and we will demand that justice is done.

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Extract

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Society Needs to Recognize Worth of Aboriginal Women

Windspeaker Editorial

Five hundred. That's the estimated number of Aboriginal women who have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada over the past two decades. Five hundred women-mothers, daughters...

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