How Many Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are there in Canada?

A special Canada Day report for Patriotic Canadians

HEY FOLKS,

Happy Canada Day!

Part of me feels bad for being a Debby Downer, but I really don’t feel that Canada has much to celebrate these days.

If you hadn’t noticed, Canada’s been going to hell in a handbasket pretty damn quickly. Case in point: the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

As you may be aware, I’ve been doing an investigation into the disappearances of indigenous women in B.C., Canada’s westernmost province.

This article will seek to answer a simple question: How many indigenous women and girls have gone missing in Canada over the past 50 years?

You might think that this question would be easy to answer, but I can assure you that it is not. As I go about my research, different numbers keep popping up. I have heard estimates ranging from the low hundreds up all the way to 4000, but it’s always seemed to me like no one actually knows. And that’s kind of a problem.

After all, there has been a TON of attention on this issue since the arrest of serial killer Robert Pickton brought it into public awareness.

Since his 2002 arrest, there have been three massive inquiries into Canada’s historic oppression of indigenous people.

THERE HAVE NOW BEEN THREE HUGE GOVERNMENT COMMISSIONS INTO CANADA’S MISTREATMENT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE… BUT NOTHING HAS REALLY CHANGED

In fact, there have been three government commissions which has studied the issue of MMIWG in great detail.

They are:

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission

• Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (B.C.)

• National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

To help orient the reader, I think it will be useful to provide a brief synopsis of each of the three commissions.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada began its work in June 2008 and concluded with the release of its final report in December 2015.

The TRC was not focused exclusively on missing women and girls. Rather, its focus was on Canada’s historic oppression of indigenous people, notably residential schools.

However, it is definitely not coincidental that it was convened after the Pickton Case brought Canada’s history of colonization into public awareness.

The budget was $62 Million.

Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (B.C.)

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in British Columbia was announced on September 27, 2010, and it began its hearings on October 11, 2011. The final report was delivered on December 17, 2012.

The budget was $10 Million.

National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) in Canada was announced on December 8, 2015, and it formally began on September 1, 2016. The final report was released on June 3, 2019.

The budget was a whopping $92 Million, and culminated with a report in which the government of Canada found itself guilty of active participation in an ongoing genocide.

Where do you go from there? Isn’t that the equivalent of a psychiatrist declaring himself insane?

YET NOTHING HAS CHANGED…

So, Canada has spent over $164 Million excavating the skeletons in its closet. Yet nothing has changed. By and large, things are exactly the same as they were before Pickton was arrested.

Don’t believe me? Look into the case of Chelsea Poorman.

QUESTIONS ABOUT METHODOLOGY

I’m not actually that keen on the idea of telling the story of MMIWG through statistics, but I think it’s to be expected that people want to have some sense of the scale of the problem. I kind of feel it’s important to have a good answer to people’s questions, and we can be sure that people will want to know how many indigenous women and girls have been murdered or gone missing

Even such a question raises new questions. For one thing, it isn’t just indigenous women and girls that have gone missing. Pickton’s victims weren’t all native. What are the pros and cons of treating the disappearances of indigenous women differently from the disappearances of other women?

For another thing, there are missing and murdered indigenous men and boys, too. Why are we treating them so differently?

These are questions worthy of consideration, but they are not the one I will try to answer today. All I want to do today is do my best to answer one tricky question: How many Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are there in Canada?

To be slightly more specific, I will be looking from 1980 onwards. I’m sure you could find examples of older cold cases, but 1980 seems like as good a place as any to draw the line if we’re trying to understand the present-day phenomenon of Canada’s missing women, which seems to have worsened in the mid 1990s or so.

That said, according to Wally Oppal, commissioner of B.C.’s Missing Women Inquiry, there were already 26 women missing by 1991. As far as I can tell, the problem of serial killers preying on indigenous women began in the 1980s.

WHERE DO WE START?

Well, for starters, let’s see what Chat GPT has to say.

Me: How many missing indigenous women are there in Canada?

Chat GPT: The number of missing Indigenous women in Canada is difficult to determine precisely due to various factors, including underreporting, misclassification, and the evolving nature of data collection. However, estimates and reports suggest significant numbers.

For example:

1. 2014 RCMP Report: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) released a report in 2014 that identified nearly 1,200 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls between 1980 and 2012. This included 1,017 homicide victims and 164 missing women.

2. National Inquiry: The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), which concluded in 2019, reported that the true number is likely much higher and pointed to systemic issues and the need for better data collection.

3. Ongoing Efforts: Various organizations, including the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) and grassroots initiatives, continue to document cases and advocate for better data collection and support for affected families.

Okay, so out of those sources, I am most interested in the data gathered by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, as that is the only named source which is independent from the government.

THE SPIRITS IN SPIRIT DATABASE

In 2005, NWAC received funding for a five-year study of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. In 2010, the NWAC Sisters In Spirit initiative produced a database of 582 cases of Aboriginal missing and murdered women and girls identified over the past 20 years.

There you have it, folks. There are at least 582 cases of MMIWG in Canada. If that feels low to you, you’re not alone. Many people believe the true number is much higher, although no one, as far as I know, has accused Sisters In Spirit of being in on the cover-up. It seems like it really isn’t easy to compile data from the many different government agencies who theoretically possess these case files. And this is actually part of the problem - law enforcement agencies in Canada often seem unwilling to share data amongst themselves.

Did Sisters in Spirit do a good job compiling data? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the National Inquiry into MMIWG had a budget of over $90 Million and published their final report without improving on the Sisters in Spirit database.

That said, the national inquiry was fraught with many serious problems, so the fact that they failed to improve upon the Sisters in Spirit data might be a result of incompetence and/or laziness.

So can I bring myself to believe that less than 600 indigenous women and girls went missing in Canada between 1985 and 2005? No, I don’t, and I’ll tell you why: literally thousands of people are reported missing every year in B.C. alone. Furthermore, there are thousands of overdose deaths every year in the province.

When it comes to homeless, drug-addicted street people, I suspect that police would be quick to rule out foul play, as an investigation would mean more work for them.

Personally, I know one person who was found dead of blunt force trauma on the streets of Ottawa. He suffered from mental illness and was homeless at the time. The police quickly ruled out foul play, claiming that he fell from a tree. How common is this? It stands to reason that the police would be less eager to investigate the murders of homeless people, doesn’t it? After all, where do you even start? Investigating the murder of a homeless person would be significantly more difficult than the life of a person with a house, job, and normal social life.

Plus, we have the last thirty years to tell us all about how much cops care about the vulnerable women of the Downtown Eastside.

And pretty much every indigenous person in Canada personally knows someone who has disappeared and/or been murdered. 600 seems low.

A complicating factor when it comes to identifying missing women is that some people die without ID, a fact that Vancouver detective Lori Shenher writes about in That Lonely Section of Hell.

It’s worth quoting her at length on this point:

Many of the victims had been known to use aliases to avoid arrest for outstanding warrants, but we were only aware of what some of those names were. I began to investigate what steps hospitals used to identify patients who were admitted unconscious and without identification. The results were not encouraging. I could not convince anyone I spoke with in the provincial government to go on the record for my file, but several officials advised me that hospitals were not in the business of identifying people.

Essentially, if someone came in with a library card, B.C. Identification Card, or something similarly lacking official standing bearing the name Sally Smith, the hospitals would be satisfied this was Sally Smith. If this woman died in hospital, the police would not be called to fingerprint her as is the procedure when someone dies without any identification—she would die as Sally Smith unless someone came forward to say otherwise, which was nearly impossible considering no one who knew this woman would be likely to know she was in hospital in the first place.

Hundreds of people die indigent every year in British Columbia. Several agencies deal with these deaths—the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the Public Guardian and Trustee, the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation—but they all work under the assumption that the deceased is the person they believe him or her to be. Often it is impossible to locate next of kin, so the deceased is interred by Glenhaven funeral home in Vancouver. Some of the missing women could have died in hospital using false identities and no one would ever have known what became of them.

Given the fact that “Cause of Death” is determined by the B.C. Coroner’s Office, it is certainly possible that some of the thousands of deaths attributed to overdoses could actually been the result of foul play. As the COVID era taught us, the decision to attribute a certain cause to a specific death is a political decision. It would be easy enough for police to sweep some violent crimes under the rug by attributing their deaths to causes other than foul play, such as drug overdoses or “exposure”.

If we want to understand how many missing and murdered indigenous women there are in Canada, it is probably a good idea to analyze all-cause mortality data.

That said, at a certain point one begins to wonder what the point of trying to come up with the biggest number is. We have heard plenty of stories from the families of murder victims by this point. There’s really no question that there is an ongoing crisis in Canada. Even if it could be proved that there are less than 1000 MMIWG in Canada, that wouldn’t be an excuse for inaction. Police have been letting people get away with murdering vulnerable people for decades now. That’s the problem that needs to be solved, whether there are 1000 victims or 5000 victims.

“NO FOUL PLAY.”

If you are having a hard time understanding why the issue of Canada’s missing women tend to lead into discussions of race and racism, there is a widespread perception that police are less likely to investigate the disappearances of indigenous women. Family members are commonly told that foul play is not suspected in cases of sudden, unexpected death.

According to a major CBC investigation:

An analysis of 32 deaths and two disappearances of Indigenous girls and women across Canada, where authorities ruled there was no foul play, reveals the following:

• Ten had unexplained injuries, though officials maintained those injuries did not contribute to the deaths.

• Seventeen were involved in domestic and family violence, where families insist there was a clear suspect.

• Six were found nude or partially clothed in suspicious or anomalous circumstances.

• In 31 of the cases, a person of interest was identified at some stage either by police or family members, but ultimately, no one was judged responsible for the death.

• In five of the cases, coroner's or inquest findings and police determinations appear to be in conflict with each other.

In 25 of the 34 cases, families say they felt racism and assumptions about the women and their lifestyles hampered the investigation.

It is worth noting that not all law enforcement agencies are equally bad. My personal focus is on the B.C. RCMP, because I believe they are the worst of the worst in Canada.

Speaking of the CBC, it is worth noting that they maintained a MMIWG database up until 2018, when they stopped updating it for some reason.

The CBC database allows you to search using different parameters.

So, we have a national database which lists 307 tragedies. I don’t think that anyone can pretend that this isn’t a serious problem. We’ve got plenty of names, and plenty of faces to put to those names. We have plenty of family members who have been doing their best to sound the alarm for decades. This is a crisis, people. It isn’t woke hyperbole to call this a national emergency.

THE MISSING WOMEN COMMISSION OF INQUIRY

I also decided to refer to Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which was convened in 2010, after Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert Pickton was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder.

It is widely believed that Pickton killed many more women, but the true number of his victims is unknown. So the government decided to spend millions of dollars studying their own incompetence.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was a commission in British Columbia ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council on September 27, 2010, to evaluate the response of law enforcement to reports of missing and murdered women. The commission concluded its Inquiry in December 2012, and outlined 63 recommendations to the Provincial government and relevant law enforcement.^[1]

It contains information about 68 women who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside between January 1997 and February 2002. Although we will probably never know how many of these women were killed by Robert Pickton and his accomplices, DNA evidence linked to 33 of them was found at his farm. 32 have been identified and one is referred to as “Jane Doe.”

Their names are:

1. Marlene Abigosis

2. Sereena Abotsway

3. Sharon Abraham

4. Elaine Allenbach

5. Angela Arsenault

6. Sherry Baker

7. Cindy Beck

8. Yvonne Boen

9. Andrea Borhaven

10. Heather Bottomley

11. Heather Chinnock

12. Nancy Clark

13. Wendy Crawford

14. Marcella Creison

15. Dawn Crey

16. Sarah de Vries

17. “Jane Doe”

18. Sheryl Donahue

19. Tiffany Drew

20. Elaine Dumba

21. Sheila Egan

22. Cara Ellis

23. Gloria Fedyshyn

24. Cynthia Feliks

25. Marnie Frey

26. Jennifer Furminger

27. Catherine Gonzalez

28. Rebecca Guno

29. Michelle Gurney

30. Inga Hall

31. Helen Hallmark

32. Ruby Hardy

33. Janet Henry

34. Tanya Holyk

35. Sherry Irving

36. Angela Jardine

37. Andrea Joesbury

38. Patricia Johnson

39. Debra Jones

40. Catherine Knight

41. Kerry Koski

42. Maria Laliberte

43. Stephanie Lane

44. Kellie Little

45. Laura Mah

46. Jacquelene McDonell

47. Diana Melnick

48. 35Volume I

49. Leigh Miner

50. Jacqueline Murdock

51. Lillian O’Dare

52. Georgina Papin

53. Tania Petersen

54. Sherry Rail

55. Dianne Rock

56. Elsie Sebastian (Jones)

57. Ingrid Soet

58. Dorothy Spence

59. Teresa Triff

60. Sharon Ward

61. Kathleen Wattley

62. Olivia William

63. Angela Williams

64. Taressa Ann Williams

65. Mona Wilson

66. Brenda Wolfe

67. Frances Young

68. Julie Young

To its credit, the Missing Women Commission includes brief biographies of these 68 women, all of which end tragically.

The Commission did not result in any police officers being criminally charged or even reprimanded. Nor was there any significant police reform to speak of.

Basically, it resulted in no real change.

WHY DIDN’T THE COMMISSION LOOK INTO WOMEN WHO DISAPPEARED PRIOR TO 1997?

When it comes to determining the total number of missing and murdered women, however, the Commission’s report falls short. Its mandate was limited to the Lower Mainland and was basically an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Pickton case.

As Shenher explains:

The focus on the hearings was on the investigations during the terms of reference and the Commission did not request documents on women reported missing prior to January 23, 1997.

Furthermore, the B.C. Commission limited its investigation to the Lower Mainland, despite the fact that there indigenous women have long been disappearing from Northern B.C. as well.

Canadian reporter Jessica McDiarmid published a book called Highway Of Tears in 2019, which is all about the women who have gone missing (or been found murdered) along Highway 16 in Northern B.C.

“No one knows who the first Indigenous girl or woman to vanish along the highway between Prince Rupert and Prince George was, or when it happened. Nor does anyone know how many have gone missing or been murdered since. In more recent years, grassroots activists, many of whom are family members of missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women, have travelled community to community to collect the names of those lost. Their lists suggest numbers far higher than those that make their way into most media reports, but they are still incomplete—people who have been gathering names for many years continue to hear about cases they were unaware of.

The RCMP has put the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada at about 1,200, with about a thousand of those being victims of homicide. The actual number is likely higher; the Native Women’s Association of Canada, or NWAC, and other advocacy groups have estimated it could be as high as four thousand.”

This number - 4000 - is the highest estimate that I have seen in print. So, although this answer is less than satisfying, I think that we can deduce that the true number of MMIWG is somewhere between 582 on the low end to 4000 on the high end. But no one really knows, and that itself is a big part of the problem.

At the end of the day, I’m really not sure how much the precise number of MMIWG matters. We’ve had a national crisis on our hands since the late 1990s, and despite all the millions of dollars spent, the problem has not been solved.

If you ask me, the reason for this is simple - the police are both incompetent and corrupt. They are more interested in covering for their own failures then they are in finding killers. And so the crisis continues.

All of this eventually led to a National MMIWG Inquiry in which the government of Canada basically found itself guilty of perpetuating an “ongoing genocide”.

Where do you go from there? There have been three massive inquiries into Canada’s treatment of indigenous people over the past 15 years, yet nothing has changed.

The simple fact is that the government is unwilling to make the changes that would be necessary to address the crisis. You know what that means?

THE ONLY SOLUTION IS REVOLUTION.

HAPPY CANADA DAY, FOLKS!

Love & Solidarity,

CROW QU’APPELLE