In addition, in 2006, filmmaker Christine Welsh released Finding Dawn, a documentary on violence against Indigeneous women and girls in Canada.   The film, like the AI Canada report, also focuses on western Canada, but specifically covers Vancouver to British Columbia. Finding Dawn has won six film awards, including a film festival by AI in Vancouver, and another in Seattle on human rights.

Stolen Sisters (English HTML), the AI Canada report on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada, details nine case studies.  In all nine case studies covered in the report, AI Canada concluded that “Canadian authorities should have done more to ensure the safety of these women and girls.” AI Canada focused on four factors that increase the risk of harm to Indigenous women and girls. The first two are Indigenous women and girls' marginalization in society and the police’s failure to adequately protect them, both of which make them vulnerable. Potential offenders understand this vulnerability and exploit it. They may brutalize Indigenous women and girls out of racism, or with the belief that they will not be prosecuted due to societal indifference.

All nine case studies are about Indigenous women and girls who lived in cities in western Canada, where such violence was well-known. Although such violence is usually understood as a criminal or social problem, AI Canada understands it as a human rights problem. “When a woman is targeted for violence because of her gender or because of her Indigenous identity, her fundamental rights have been abused. And when she is not offered an adequate level of protection by state authorities because of her gender or because of her Indigenous identity, those rights have been violated.”  From Amnesty International Canada, Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and violence against indigenous women in Canada (4 October 2004).

The report ends with a six-point platform to begin solving the problem of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada. AI Canada calls on the government to acknowledge the problem, support research on the extent and causes of the problem, take immediate action to protect women at greatest risk, help police make the problem a priority by providing training and resources, address the root causes of the victims’ vulnerability, and end the marginalization of Indigenous women and girls in Canadian society.

 Compiled from:

Amnesty International Canada, Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and violence against indigenous women in Canada (4 October 2004) (English HTML and PDF, 67 pages; French HTML).

Women Make Movies, Film Catalog: Finding Dawn (accessed 23 October 2008).