New research carried out by the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) has led to increased estimations on how many indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada. Patricia Hajdu, who serves as Canada's minister for the status of women, put the new figure at approximately 4,000, according to the Guardian.
Hajdu had been touring the country with minister for indigenous affairs Carolyn Bennett to pave the way for an inquiry into the issue. She told reporters on Tuesday that the new number was based on a list put together by Walk4Justice, an initiative that collected names of murdered and missing women across Canada until 2011, according to CBC News. If accurate, this is a dramatic increase on the number previously given by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who put out a report in 2014 stating that approximately 1,200 indigenous women had disappeared between 1980 and 2012.
Bennett stated that while the RCMP "did their very best," the testimony that she and Hajdu had heard from survivors and families across Canada suggested that the higher number was more accurate. President of the NWAC, Dawn Lavell-Harvard, claimed that some of the discrepancy between the two numbers can be attributed to a longstanding relationship of mistrust between native communities and the police, according to reports by CBC News.
"Part of the challenge comes from the fact that very often many families, because of negative interactions in the past, because of racism, have not in fact reported when a loved one goes missing," Lavell-Harvard told CBC News, "There's a lack of willingness to trust police forces and to come forward."
Both Bennett and Hajdu also pointed to underreporting and failures to investigate on the part of the police as likely contributing factors, according to the Toronto Star.
"The problem is not about us fighting the numbers," Bennett told reporters on Tuesday. "The problem is making sure that these families that lost a loved one, these survivors that are still living, that their stories lead us to the kind of concrete actions that will actually put an end to their vulnerability and what has been going on."
