Response to article in Vancouver Sun- “$10 Million ‘a start’ to investigate women’s deaths, disappearances”

In the article, "$10 Million ‘a start' to investigate women's deaths, disappearances," the author, Lori Culbert, explains that despite the federal government's promise of delivering $10 million to the investigation of missing and murdered aboriginal women's cases, this promise has been received with "cautious optimism." Cautious optimism indeed, as many individuals and women's groups across Canada have been fighting for decades to get the Canadian government to even acknowledge these cases, let alone actually do something about it.

Although there have been 520 reported missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls over the last four decades, only now, for the first time, has the federal government finally agreed to investigate this
pressing issue. Why has this taken 48 plus years for the government to finally acknowledge that something drastic must be done? What does this say about the justice system and how they treat women? In my opinion, the Canadian justice system is sending out the message that violence against women is unimportant and that it can simply be swept under the rug.

Perhaps if these women were of Caucasian decent instead of First Nations, this issue would have been dealt with immediately, and Canada wouldn't have had to lose 520 of their female citizens. This therefore is an issue of sex, class, and race- due to their heritage, beliefs, and skin colour, these women went missing and murdered for 48 years without justice. Although this is an unforgiveable mistake, it is now crucial that both the police and Canadian government take every action to provide the public with the answers that have gone overlooked for so many years and ensure that acts of violence against women, such as these, never occur again.