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For more two decades women have gone missing along British Columbia's Highway 16, so many that it's been unofficially renamed the Highway of Tears. The RCMP are officially investigating nine case though it's thought that more than thirty women have gone missing. Why does it seem that many women women have to go missing before anyone pays attention?
In a BC North Magazine Debi Smith sets up the scenario by which we can imagine the women have gone missing.
A young girl stands beside Highway 16 with her arm and thumb raised high. A car or truck pulls over, she hops in for a ride, never to be seen alive again. For more than a decade, young women have disappeared or have been found slain along Highway 16 in northern BC.
Posters bearing their pictures can still be found on hydro poles and laundromat post-it boards. "Missing," they shout in large letters under a photo of a smiling, unpretentious-looking young woman or teenager.
Most of the women who have gone missing on the Highway of Tears are aboriginal. It is believed that more than 500 aboriginal women in Canada are currently missing. Linda Diebel, at the Toronto Star wrote a post last month in which she wondered how many aboriginal women have to go missing before we pay attention.
Police always discount that less attention is paid to cases involving aboriginal women than non-aboriginal, however it surely would be a nationally recognized scandal if these were young women of another racial background. It is a national scandal, it's just not recognized as such.
This issue isn't exclusive to Canada. Cara at Feministe blogged about how nine women in Rocky Mount, North Carolina have gone missing since 2005. Six of their bodies have been found. Cara just heard about the missing women recently because it's not getting much press. The women aren't white. Some of them were sex workers. Gee, does that sound familiar? Oh right. We didn't pay attention when women started disappearing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside until their numbers climbed to a point where they absolutely couldn't be ignored. Then their remains showed up on Robert Pickton's pig farm. Pickton has since been charged and found guilty in the murder of six of the women. He's appealing. It remains to be be seen if he'll be charged in the murders of the other twenty women.
Fit of Pique's cat is missing, and though it is absolutely nothing like a missing person it makes her think of the many women who have disappeared along the highway.
A missing cat and a missing woman are not the same things. I know this. There won’t be an investigation into where my cat went, and if someone did do something to him, he or she (but probably he) will most likely get away with it. But then it makes me think about all the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and how sometimes it seems as if our lives are equal to those of cats. Just more faces peering out of faded posters, dotting the landscape, reminding us that we are not safe or protected.
As women we are not safe and protected and there's no guarantees that if we go missing someone will try to find us. Especially if we aren't white. Or if we are drug addicts. Or if we are sex workers. It appears in our society that some of us are more equal than others when it comes to missing person investigations. Some of us are less protected than others. How many women have to go missing before we pay attention?
Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.
