Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada

Abstract

This chapter examines how one particular group of people within Canada, indigenous women, experiences both a higher rate of victimization and a lower rate of case clearance. Indigenous women in Canada are three times more likely to be killed by a stranger than non-Aboriginal women, and as of 2010, clearance rates for cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous women are consistently lower across Canada. Despite these statistics, other measures show that Indigenous women show similar satisfaction with their personal safety from crime as non-Aboriginal women as well as other measures indicating a similar confidence in the criminal justice system as non-Indigenous women. In this chapter, it is argued that the dissonance between certain measures is indicative of the settler-colonial heritage that informs both the perception of violence against indigenous women in Canada, as well as the phenomenon of violence against indigenous women themselves.