This Wednesday, April 11, 2018, from 6 pm to 8 pm, at Ziibiwing Center Conference Room, there will a film screening of Highway of Tears. Following the showing of the film there will be a discussion.
The film, Highway of Tears, covers the dozens of Canadian women and girls, most of whom are indigenous, that have disappeared or have been murdered near the stretch of Highway 16 in Canada. This stretch of highway goes past thick forests, logging towns, and Indian reservations. This film facilitated a movement in addressing the vanishing of indigenous women in Canada. It provided a platform to discuss the cases of indigenous women who are reported murdered or disappeared.
In the United States the U.S. Department of Justice states that, “On any given day, there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons cases in the U.S. Every year, tens of thousands of people vanish under suspicious circumstances.” These numbers come from those that are reported or found. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), one of the challenges of these types of cases is that reporting adult missing persons cases is voluntary. The primary challenge was in having a central reporting system for unidentified human remains.
Indian Country Today did a story on April 11, 2016, covering Missing and Murdered: No One Knows How Many Native Women Have Disappeared. In the story, Mary Pember stated that, Native women are not often seen as worthy victims. We have to first prove our innocence, that we weren’t drunk or out partying.” In this article it states that “Native women are murdered at more than 10 times the national average” on some reservations. Also stated in the article is that “the high rates of sexual violence against Native women are inextricably tied to the likelihood of them going missing: violence, disappearance and murder are closely interconnected.”
This film screening is to provide awareness and to provide a community stance against these types of injustices. Please join us on Wednesday, April 11th, at Ziibiwing.