Communities across Canada gather every year on October 4th for “Sisters in Spirit” vigil, an event to commemorate the lives of missing and murdered Aboriginal women of Canada and to demand justice in the face of stubborn indifference from both government and police. This indifference appears despite a very clear pattern of racist-misogynist violence under which Indigenous women in Canada are five to seven times more vulnerable than non-Indigenous women according to the government’s own statistics; however, Amnesty International speculates that even this may be understating the problem as a result of deficiencies in state reporting.
Loretta Saunders, a 26-year old Inuk woman who was studying Criminology at St. Mary’s University, turned in her 28-page thesis proposal in late January of this year in which she intended to detail the cruel violence faced by Canada’s Indigenous women. Yesterday, her body was found in a wooded median along a New Brunswick highway. She was pregnant before her murder.
Viat theglobeandmail.com
Her roommates, 25-year old Blake Leggette and 28-year old Victoria Henneberry, had already been arrested by police on charges related to her Feb. 13 disappearance. On Feb. 18 the pair were arrested on charges of fraud and possession of stolen goods — Loretta’s car.
Police have stated that they have identified suspects in the homicide case and that they are not presently seeking any further suspects.
Her thesis advisor Darryl Leroux had given her glowing remarks in response to her thesis proposal (detailed in his own words here), which sadly she will never be able to complete.
Cheryl Maloney
Via cbc.ca
At a press conference held within hours of the discovery of Loretta’s body, Cheryl Maloney, President of the Nova Scotia Women’s Association, stated
“I’m never going to let Stephen Harper or Canadians forget about Loretta and all the other missing or murdered aboriginal people.”
and further,
“She wasn’t what society expected for a missing aboriginal girl. Canadian society, and especially our prime minister, has been able to ignore the reality of the statistics that are against aboriginal girls… This is not what everyone expects, but she is at risk. Every aboriginal girl in this country is vulnerable. For Canada to be ignoring it for so long, it’s disheartening. How many more families does this have to happen to before they take seriously the problem?”
Loretta joins a staggering number of other Indigenous women whose families are left grieving and wondering if they’ll ever see change or accountability. We can only hope that her tragic death will serve as a wake-up call to the Canadian government and police forces to take action to prevent violence against vulnerable women in Canada, but as the content of Loretta’s thesis proposal demonstrates, the wait’s already been a long one.
This is really disheartening. She was someone who was aware of the problem and actively working to understand and fight it, and she still somehow became a victim of it. There isn’t much reason to trust that the government will do the right thing, but I really hope that they do.
I’m glad this was acknowledged on AS. The loss of Loretta Saunders is absolutely heartbreaking and horrible. She was doing big things for our community, she was pregnant, she was going places. And now she joins a list of lost women that only other Native women seem to care about, a list of women she was advocating for. A list with names like Shannon Alexander and Maisy Ojdick, who were only 17 and 18. I’m sure the main reason Loretta’s disappearance and murder are garnering attention is due to the fact that she’s young, pretty, fair skinned, and educated. And while I’m glad non-Native people are finally taking notice, we’ll see if the same notice is given to the next Native girl that goes missing (because there will be a next girl) who’s maybe not so fair, ” together”, and anglocentrically pretty. I guess that’ll be the test.
In my culture, when a person dies, you say their names over and over until you no longer have breath to do so. I think that’s fitting here–saying her name until people can ‘t forget anymore about the most vulnerable smong them: Native women and girls.
By the way, the memorial day for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women was just a couple of weeks ago, and unfortunately shares the day with the racist Vagina Monologues’ “V-Day movement.”
I’m guessing you’ve probably already seen this, but for those who haven’t:
On the subject of Eve Ensler and the “V-Day” thing, here is an open letter from Lauren Chief Elk to Ensler that, looking back on it, I probably should have worked into the above piece. It is very well worth reading:
http://chiefelk.tumblr.com/post/49527456060/an-open-letter-to-eve-ensler
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
Yep, I’ve read it, and follow her Twitter. She had a lot to say leading up to and on VDay. All important things. Love her.
I have very complicated feelings regarding Ensler and the Monologues. But I’m glad you didn’t mention it in the piece , b/c I’d rather not subtract from the attention on Saunders to have people rant about all the things they find problematic about it that have nothing to do with Saunders and MMIW. It wouldn’t be fair to Saunders or MMIW .
That’s a really good point. Maybe including it would have been buying into Ensler’s logic of injecting herself into the issue, so probably better leaving it out after all.
Just a note: the assumed suspects were actually her subletters, and she disappeared when going to collect overdue rent money from them.
A truly horrible, horrible event. Every woman in Halifax is grieving.
I haven’t heard about this phenomenon at all before – does anyone have any information they wouldn’t mind sharing about what is going on with this? Why are these women being targeted, who is doing it (in terms of do they belong to any hate group, etc)?
The “why” is simply because they are a marginalized group (women) within a marginalized group (Aboriginal communities in Canada), and therefore, tragically, easy targets. Many First Nations people here live in poverty and in remote, isolated communities with little transportation. Several of the Highway of Tears cases involved women who had to hitchhike as their main mode of transportation. Many of the women missing from Vancouver’s East Side were Aboriginal women who had become involved in drugs and prostitution.
Canada has this international reputation as some kind of inclusive, “racism-free” zone, but the reality is that the way our Aboriginal communities are treated here is an abomination. You get the occasional http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/society/education/a-lost-heritage-canadas-residential-schools/a-long-awaited-apology.htmlgovernment posturing for public image and votes, but the voices of First Nations people continue to be ignored if not outright suppressed.
It’s not just Canadian First Nations, it’s also US Native women. Although Canada has a higher First Nation population percentage. First Nation women make up 2% of the population and account for over 25% of murders. It’s faaaabulous. In the US, the stats are a little bit more vague due to tribal governments vs Us government, and the US government not really caring so much.
Here is a brief fact sheet (it’s a PDF):
http://www.nwac.ca/files/download/NWAC_3E_Toolkit_e_0.pdf
Also I lived on the Highway of Tears for several years, so here is some information more specific to that:
http://www.highwayoftears.ca/about-us/highway-of-tears
Horrible.
Thank you for talking about this! <3
Inconsistencies in Provincial reporting, not state.
I just want to say thank you to Autostraddle for posting, and Savannah for writing this article. Canada has an amazing ability to hide the atrocities faced by aboriginal peoples because of forced colonization. The Red Dress Project is another great thing bringing awareness to this cause. This site gets traffic from all over the world and people need to know these statistics, this is not something we can ignore. As societies we tend to focus more on other peoples problems without taking a moment to look at our own discrepancies. Here in Canada we may not face much overt violence but we suffer from immense amounts of silent violence. As a Canadian I am ashamed of the way many of us treat aboriginal people, and as a women I am ashamed of the lack of us standing up for this justice.
This is terrible :(
This is absolutely heartbreaking and upsetting.
IS THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT TRULY PREJUDICE/BIAST AGAINST FIRST
NATIONS PEOPLES. THEY SHOULDN’T BE BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE ONES
DESTROYING THIS PLANET WITH TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF POLLUTION TO
DESTROY OUR HEALTH SLOW BY SLOW. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, FOR JUST A FEW
MINUTES OF SEXUAL FUN BY A SILLY AND HORRIBLE INSANE MAN WOMAN HAVE
TO DIE TO KEEP SILENT. I BELIEVE WOMEN AND GOOD MEN MUST FORM A
COALITION AND DEMAND THE RIGHTS AND PROTECTION OF ALL WOMEN.