Missing Women

December 2020

Canada’s history of prejudice and discrimination against Indigenous people traces back to the earliest of European settlers. This history of violence against Indigenous people has been so normalized that the RCMP and local police forces have thousands of case files that are going cold without ever seeing the light of day. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is known as the poorest postal code in Canada and is where many sex workers, most of whom are Indigenous women, have gone missing over the past few decades. Vancouver Police officers neglect this area so much that victims and their families don’t even bother to fill out official police reports for anything. Indigenous women in Canada are also at risk when they travel along a stretch of road known as the Highway of Tears. This area is home to several poor Indigenous communities who lack public transportation and are forced to hitchhike along the highway. The landscape and wilderness that surrounds the Highway of Tears is the perfect place for someone to pick up a hitchhicker, kill them, and dump them without the local police even batting an eye because the victim was an Indigenous woman.

Materials:

Stained Glass