If there is any good to come from the death of a young woman, it can only be knowledge that will help prevent future tragedies.
Sadly, Canadians and First Nations people cannot deny awareness of the crisis involving missing and murdered aboriginal women, only a shameful lack of interest and action.
Hundreds turned out this weekend to remember Tashina General, 21, whose body was discovered in April in a shallow grave on Six Nations, three months after the pregnant woman went missing. Her former boyfriend, Kent Owen Hill, has been charged with second-degree murder.
The memorial walk was part of the Sisters in Spirit initiative by the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), which seeks to address "the impact of racialized, sexualized violence against Aboriginal women often leading to their disappearance and death."
For three agonizing months, General was one of those missing women, though she did not fit the stereotype of the high-risk lifestyle connected with many of the disappearances, especially in Western Canada.
It did, however, hit home with NWAC president Beverley Jacobs, a cousin of General's who spoke to those gathered this weekend.
However, few can deny general awareness of the reality that native women in Canada face a higher risk of violence than the average Canadian woman.
According to the 2004 General Social Survey, which documents self-reported information, aboriginal people were three times more likely to experience violence like assault, sexual assault and robbery.
Violence against aboriginals was more likely to be committed by an acquaintance (56 per cent of the time), than violence against non-aboriginals (41 per cent), according to the same survey.
Over the five years prior to the survey, 21 per cent of aboriginals reported physical or sexual violence by a spouse, compared to six per cent of non-aboriginals. The survey also noted a homicide rate from 1997 to 2000 that was seven times higher for aboriginals.
If people can continue to ignore statistics as stark and obvious as these, maybe they will have a harder time dealing with the shame and sorrow of an individual tragedy like the death of Tashina General.
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