Amnesty International has just released a damning report, exposing the rampant indifference to violence against women in Canada. Clearly the world's most well known human rights watchdog found the case of women, and the egregious neglect of the safety of Native women in particular, too galling to ignore. The results deserve serious attention, as they point to the ongoing impact of colonialism and racism here in "the best place on Earth," as the B.C. Liberals' nauseating ad campaign likes to describe this corner of the world. Of course, it is right here in B.C. that one of the worst cases of serial killings in North American history took place and was ignored for years, because the victims were poor Native women.

As Canadians, when Amnesty International (AI) releases a report about violence and human rights abuses against women, our minds like to wander away from home to countries around the world. For instance, recent images of the Sudan might come to mind, where women and girls are currently being raped as a consequence of the war in Darfur. Or, our thoughts might turn to the women oppressed and victimized by patriarchal and religious states, like the Afghani women who were forced to wear the burqa under the Taliban regime. This subjugation became a symbol evoked by George W. Bush's administration -- using his wife Laura as a most unlikely pseudo-feminist mouthpiece -- to legitimize the war against, and occupation of, Afghanistan.

So the Amnesty report may prove shocking to many Canadians, who naïvely believe that our country is devoid of these types of human rights atrocities, especially in terms of violence against women -- over and above the culturally acceptable level of domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, and economic exploitation that is currently tolerated. Our country will now be spotlighted among human rights abusers like Israel, China, and Sudan, thanks to the report, entitled "Stolen Sisters - Discrimination and Violence against Indigenous Women in Canada." The document details how First Nations women experience a horrific level of violence on an everyday basis, and how state institutions have a disinterest or indifference towards the safety of Indigenous women.

The report argues that the level of violence against First Nations women is significantly disproportionate to that suffered by other women. In fact, our own government statistics state that women between the ages of 25-44, who have status under the "Indian Act", are 5 times more likely to be killed by violence than other women. The report is saturated with the names and stories of First Nations women who have gone ‘missing’ or whose bodies have been found sexually assaulted and murdered.

Amnesty International’s report illustrates that First Nations women are forced to live within a culture of violence that is rarely spoken about through corporate media, state policies, or the law. They are often over-policed and under-protected, and there seems to be a conspiracy of silence surrounding this injustice. Amnesty argues that First Nations women have not received the protection they deserve from police, maintaining that police practices have allowed the victimization of these marginalized women to continue. For instance, on a bureaucratic level, police rarely record the ethnicity of victims of crime or missing persons, which would allow for clearer statistical analysis of how vulnerable First Nations women are to violence. First Nations people, in general, also face arrest and prosecution at a far greater rate than other ethnicities and are over-represented in our prison systems. The First Nations community is not seen by police forces as needing protection, as the AI report strongly suggests it should be seen, but as a community from which white and middle class communities need to be protected.

Unfortunately, here in British Columbia, the murders of Native women and girls often go unsolved and forgotten. This can be seen in murders on a stretch B.C.’s Highway 16, from 1990 to 1995. This road has been labeled the “highway of tears,” where the disappearances and murders of five Native women occurred: Lana Derrick (19 years-old), Ramona Wilson (15), Delphine Nikal (15), Roxanne Thiara (15) and Alishia Germaine (15). These cold cases remain unsolved, with police in the area insisting that they have no evidence and no way of linking these cases together. What's more, they continue to adamantly resist the notion that they are dealing with a serial killer.

Denial of the possibility that a serial killer was at work was most notable in the case of the missing women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). As family members, friends and activists in the DTES argued that large numbers of prostitutes had disappeared, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) rejected the claim that it could be a serial killer. In fact, when questioned, they often claimed that prostitutes were nomadic by nature and could have “just left town” or didn’t want to be found by their family or friends. It was as if members of the VPD had been too seduced by the city’s Hollywood North industry, almost proposing that a fairy tale, Pretty Womanesque situation was occurring in our city. Prostitutes disappearing at alarming rates must have meant that rich, handsome Johns were seducing prostitutes, then running away with them and living happily ever after. Unfortunately for the up to 61 missing women in Vancouver, Richard Gere did not pick them up in his Lotus, but pig farmer and accused mass murderer Robert Pickton did, leaving the VPD with the largest serial killer investigation in Canadian history.

The lack of attention these missing women received was no coincidence; they were poor, prostitutes, and Native. Over 50% of the missing 61 women were First Nations, in a region where First Nations represent less than 5% of the total population. This case was easy to ignore not only for the police, but for the government as well. In 1997, ten years after the first missing women had been reported, Mayor Phillip Owen approved a $100 000 dollar reward for the culprits of the “garage robberies”, where the city’s most affluent residents on Vancouver’s Westside had experienced a number of break-ins to their garages. These bandits became our city’s number one enemy, as rich residents howled about having their bikes, skis, tools, or Mercedes taken from their garages. Meanwhile, the families of the missing women were still trying to convince police and government that their loved ones where in fact valuable people whose whereabouts should be investigated.

What the Amnesty report fails to address is the historical background to violence First Nations women face today in Canada. The report tiptoes around the impact of colonialism, which was the first violence inflicted by the settler society against First Nations women in Canada. There is no mention of the need for the government or the Canadian people to support Native Sovereignty or equitable land claims negotiation. Neither are any links made between the cutting of government programs, like welfare, and women being forced into prostitution for survival.

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