Highway of Tears

Jessica McDiarmid, a journalist, follows the lives of families who have lost a loved one and are living with the effects of the tragedies that have befallen on not only them, but also their communities. McDiarmid focuses on the journeys of a few families and their communities highlighting their fight for justice and for change, providing readers with an insight to a national problem. It has been decades, too many decades, that Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or found murdered along the Highway of Tears. It has been too many decades that these women and girls’ families have had to fight for justice, to fight to be heard.

This book was a heavy read. I navigated my way through it slowly; this was not the book to rush through at all. There were plenty of times where I found myself putting it down, collecting and bracing myself for what I was going to be discovering next. Not only is this a topic that everyone should know about, but Jessica McDiarmid does an amazing job of presenting the raw stories of the families in an engaging manner. McDiarmid sheds light on the daily challenges of Indigenous communities such as police discrimination, victimization and even vilification of the members of their communities. Many of the families go unheard and are not taken seriously when reporting a missing loved one, as police are quick to victim blame, claiming the missing person must have run away, or they are out partying and getting drunk or once a body is found the search for the suspect goes cold.

One of the missing girls discussed in The Highway of Tears is Ramona Wilson. When her mother went to the authorities to report her missing, the RCMP brushed her off remarking that she was a teenager who must have got caught up partying as it was summer and would turn up. As highlighted by McDiarmid, not only is there police discrimination but media coverage differs greatly when it comes to a missing or murdered Indigenous woman or girl compared to a when a caucasian woman or girl is missing or murdered. It took a very persistent mother to bring some attention to the disappearance of Ramona Wilson and finally eleven days later the first story of Ramona appeared in the local newspaper. This one case is not an anomaly, many families who have lost a loved one echo the same stories and struggles.

The Highway of Tears is a 725 kilometre stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert. Many Indigenous women and girls have gone missing, continue to go missing, found murdered or continue to be found murdered along this highway. For decades the communities have been fighting for action, to help prevent these tragedies or to find answers of what happened to their loved ones. I did not know what the Highway of Tears was until my twenties, during my undergraduate studies in Criminology and had started to enroll in whatever course I could about Indigenous people. As if the amount of Indigenous women and girls that were missing or found murdered was not enough, the reason why it bothered me even more was, I had never heard of the Highway of Tears when it was actually close to home.

My hometown is Williams Lake, a small town in the Central Interior in British Columbia, which lies within the traditional territory of the Secwepmec, neighbours the Xats’ull and the T’exelcemc, and is also home to the Tsilhqot’in. One of the first known victims of the Highway of Tears, Gloria Moody, was actually last seen at a bar in Williams Lake back in 1969. The next day, just ten kilometers away she was found deceased beaten, sexually assaulted, stripped and left naked, bleeding to death from her injuries. She was a loving mother of two. Although this is the first “known”or recorded case, reports indicate that there have been missing Indigenous female investigations going back to 1952 and who knows what was happening before that.

Like Gloria, many Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or found murdered over the years, such as Alberta Williams (24), Delphine Nikal (15), Roxanne Thiara (15), Ada Brown (41), Jean Mary Kovacs (36), Mary Jane Hill (31), and Alisha “Leah” Germaine (15), some of which are discussed in McDiarmid’s book.

The list does not end there. Indigenous females are six times more likely to be a victim of murder than non-Indigenous females, and aforementioned, are not given the same attention as missing and murdered non-Indigenous females. According to statistics, Indigenous people make up about 4.3% of Canada’s population. Note that that percentage is for Indigenous people in Canada, not Indigenous women of Canada. Yet Indigenous females make up about 16% of female homicide victims and make up 11% of missing women. According to the Assembly of First Nations, from the year 2001 to 2014, the average number of homicides with Indigenous female victims was four times higher than homicides with non-Indigenous female victims.

Now, I’ve looked at this topic more than a few times. These women and girls would not be missing or murdered at alarming rates if it was not for the systemic racism and oppression. Some of these Indigenous disappearances or murders have been linked to serial killers but there is more to it. There have been numerous accounts of authorities also targeting Indigenous women and girls, raping them while in custody and dumping them in secluded areas. Although there is the possibility that some of these women and girls were the victims of a serial killer or more than one serial killer, there is also a high possibility that these women and girls are just vulnerable, making them susceptible targets of violence, abduction, rape, and murder. Even if there was the possibility of a serial killer, the lack of attention to reports being made by families allowed more Indigenous women and girls to go missing. The lack of jobs and education opportunities in the rural Indigenous communities forces Indigenous people to venture out into the cities in hopes to continue their education or to obtain a job. Travelling to these cities from their communities is no easy feat either as there are limited, if any, transportation services operating in those areas. Subsequently, in order to make the trek to bigger towns and cities in hopes of opportunities, they rely on hitchhiking, one of their only ways other than walking. Another issue is the discrimination they face from communities and authorities. They are stereotyped as troublemakers, promiscuous, and are sexually objectified which results in murder, rape, and violence against Indigenous women. This important read, Highway of Tears is definitely as stated, it is “a true story of racism, indifference, and the pursuit of justice for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

Instead of providing these communities with resources or acknowledging the lack of resources, the public, authorities, and media are quick to blame victims for hitchhiking. Instead of addressing underlying issues and intergenerational traumas, they continue to blame victims for putting themselves in situations where they may face harm. Instead of acknowledging that these women and girls are normal women and girls like the rest of us and instead of preventing these tragedies they act after the fact, when it is too late. Although the government has somewhat acknowledged a sliver of these tragedies, these tragedies keep occuring. These women and girls have families. They are daughters, sisters, wives, loved ones, and mothers. They are loved, missed, and never forgotten. They have names: Ramona Wilson, Alberta Williams, Delphine Nikal, Roxanne Thiara, Ada Brown, Jean Mary Kovacs, Mary Jane Hill, and Alisha “Leah” Germaine, Monica Jack, Lana Derrick, Tamara Chipman, Aielah Saric-Auger, Jean Virginia Sampare, Jessica Patrick-Balczer, Nicole Hoar, Shelly-Anne Bascu, Maureen Mosie, Monica Jack, Monica Ignas, Gale Weys, Micheline Pare, and Gloria Moody to name just a few. Just a few from the long endless list.