In Canada, up to 4,000 indigenous women are estimated to be missing or murdered, according to research from the Native Women’s Association of Canada.
The country’s Minister for the Status of Women, Patricia Hajdu, said that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2014 estimate of 1,200 is highly inaccurate.
“When you actually start to add in, you know, disputed cases, for example, people that have claimed it’s a suicide or death due to exposure, but in fact there’s symptoms or signs that maybe it wasn’t, then of course the numbers jump,” Hajdu said to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced late last year that he wants to improve relations with the First Nations people of Canada, and specifically addressed the issue of the missing or murdered women.
“We have made this inquiry a priority for our government because those touched by this national tragedy have waited long enough. The victims deserve justice, their families an opportunity to be heard and to heal,” Trudeau said, according to the CBC.
Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s Minister for Indigenous Affairs, says that the focus should not be on the numbers.
“I don’t have the data, but I know the problem is not about us fighting about the numbers,”she said, according to The Guardian. “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.”
From 2008-2011, Walk4Justice Activists collected the names of 4,232 missing and murdered indigenous women throughout Canada. A Montreal-based campaign hosts events to honor and fight for the women, including the Walk4Justice data gathering.
According to the CBC, one person at the NWAC said that between “60 to 70 per cent” of the names on the Walk4Justice list were women of native descent. There is some confusion over the number, but according to NWAC president Dawn Lavell-Harvard, this just highlights how important it is to solve the problems that led to so many missing women.
“Lives are too important to rely on an informal database. The gulf between 1,200 and pushing 4,000 is huge. Even if it is somewhere in the middle, it is still an outrageous number,” Lavell-Harvard told the CBC. “I think that’s why it’s so important that this inquiry happen.”