How extensive is violence against Indigenous women in Canadian towns and cities?
The problem is that no one knows for sure how many women have been murdered or gone missing because of too many gaps in police reporting and government analysis of violent crimes against Indigenous women. It is Amnesty’s view, however, that thousands of lives are at risk. Indigenous women in Canada face an extraordinarily high rate of violence. One 1996 statistic says Indigenous women between the ages of 25 and 44 with status under the federal Indian act are five times more likely to die a violent death than all other women. While some of this violence is family violence within Indigenous communities an important issue that has also not received the attention it deserves there are growing number of cases on the public record of Indigenous women living in predominantly non-Indigenous communities who have been murdered or have gone missing under circumstances that suggest they may have been the victims of violent crimes. The way in which many Indigenous women have been uprooted from thei
