Missing People Research Paper

Over the past year I have become more socially aware of missing people. I started off following Missing Manitobans, Bear Clan and Winnipeg Police. It was incredibly eye opening to see how many people were going missing and some of the common traits, Indigenous and Female. Almost every time a white individual would go missing the post would be shared by numerous members of my friends and family, but when the individual was Indigenous than fewer people would share it. I brought this up to several of my friends and family members and the response is almost the same every time “They did it to themselves” or “It’s because of someone in their own community”. These two points always leave me at a loss for words, why is our society socially aware …show more content…
55). There were man Missionary schools which were run by churches “which aimed to kill the Indian in order to save the man” (Abbott Mihesuah, 2003, p.55). Christianity taught through church missionary societies impacted the Europeans way of how they viewed Indigenous people. Christianity states that darker skin is associated with the devil (Abbott Mihesuah, 2003, p. 59) therefore, when the Europeans saw the Indigenous women they associated them as being evil sex symbols for being topless, carrying weapons and being surrounded by animals (Abbott Mihesuah, 2003, p. 59). Indigenous women were also referred to as a squaw, which is Cree for a woman, however European men turned this into a negative, degrading and humiliating word to call Indigenous women (Sutherland, 2008, p. 129). In the late 1800s Indigenous children were sent to residential schools to control their indigenous culture. Residential schools were boarding schools where the children would leave all of their culture behind and assimilate into European culture. Residential schools were established by the government of Canada (Abbott Mihesuah, 2003, p. 55). By the 1900s there was 20,000 children in Residential schools, there were several reports of children having major health problems, improper diets, poor living conditions and enduring various …show more content…
After a long waited time Justin Trudeau approved an Inquiry into MMIW. (Wiart, 2016, para. 1) This is something we can look forward to for the future, but we won’t know the results until later in the year. Justin Trudeau has also signed onto the United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP states recommendations for Countries on how to deal with Indigenous peoples rights. Some of the recommendations include recognizing that they are equal but have the right to consider them different, that they have the right to determine their own political status, the right to self-governance, and the right to not be forced to assimilate (United Nations, 2008). Unfortunately, UNDRIP was proposed in 2007 but Canadas conservative government didn’t sign on until this past year when we changed to a liberal government (Fontaine, 2015). These are two promising opportunities that could help Indigenous women gain back there fundamental rights as Canadian