Aboriginal Women are Over-Represented Among Canada's Murdered and Missing Women

The RCMP has released the long awaited report on the Operational Review on missing and murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada.

Close to 300 policing agencies across the country and Statistics Canada produced a comprehensive account of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada to date. The review concludes that Aboriginal women account for 16 per cent of female homicides and 11.3 per cent of missing women. This is three to four times higher than the representation of Aboriginal women in the Canadian population.

“Every file we reviewed represents a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt or friend,” said Bob Paulson, Commissioner of the RCMP. “We cannot lose sight of the human aspect of these incidents and we call upon partners and communities to work together to find solutions to this issue.”

Dating back to 1952 there have been 1,181 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. 164 missing and 1,017 murdered, nine out of 10 murders of Aboriginal women have been resolved by police (987 out of 1,017). There are still 120 murder cases unsolved and 105 missing cases.

The research also indicated that in 89 per cent of cases the perpetrators were male; an average of 35 years old and in 63 per cent of cases had consumed alcohol prior to the incident. The report concluded that the total number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada exceeds previous estimates.

You can read the full report here.