Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid

Ramona Wilson. Delphine Nikal. Roxanne Thiara. Alishia Germaine. Lana Derrick. Alberta Williams. Nicole Hoar. Tamara Chipman. Aielah Saric-Auger. These are the names of many of the women and girls that Jessica McDiarmid focuses on in Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 

"The Highway of Tears is a 725-kilometre stretch of highway in British Columbia. And it is a microcosm of a national tragedy - and travesty. Indigenous people in this country are far more likely to face violence than any other segment of the population. A 2014 Statistics Canada report found Indigenous people face double the rate of violence of non-Indigenous people. Indigenous women and girls, in particular, are targets. They are six time more likely to be killed than non-Indigenous women. They face a rate of serious violence twice as high as that of Indigenous men and nearly triple that of non-Indigenous women." (page 4) And so this book begins. 

McDiarmid covers stories of many women and girls who were murdered or went missing along this isolated stretch of highway in Canada, the implications for the communities these women and girls came from, and the disheartening lack of response from the government. I feel like a lot of the basic story of First Nations people in Canada has been covered in some excellent reporting recently (if you are not listening to Connie Walker's podcasts you are missing out - check out Finding Cleo and Who Killed Alberta Williams? if you haven't done so already), so I already knew the broad strokes of this story, but this was so much more than just a recitation of the facts of the cases, but instead a broad look at how this happened in the first place and what the response has been like and why it has been like it has been. 

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"They didn't just victimize those kids. They victimized whole families." - Sally Gibson, who lost two nieces along the Highway of Tears (page 90)

In Carrier, the word for police translates into "those who take us away." (page 108)

The majority of Indigenous children, who are vastly overrepresented in the care system across Canada, are there become of "neglect," not abuse. What constitutes neglect is, in some cases, dubious - in some provinces, too few windows in a home is grounds enough to remove children - and largely stems from poverty. (page 228)

There are now more Indigenous children in the child welfare system than at the height of residential schools; in fact, the system has been called "a second generation of residential schools." (page 229)

It's crucial to understand the legacy that residential boarding schools have had on the Indigenous population in Canada (and the US, but this book focuses on Canada). Families were torn apart and multiple generations were separated and lost ties to language, religion, and culture. Many Indigenous families do not immediately report missing loved ones to authorities because there is a legacy of mistrusting governmental institutions that literally split families apart. Furthermore, many Indigenous families are scared to even be on the radar of any social service because children are still removed from their homes than any other group.

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Even if families do report missing loved ones to the authority, they are frequently slow to respond in any meaningful way.

"The key problem - one that has bled into the RCMP's culture - is that the organization's central purpose is as a federal defensive force, and not a municipal protective force. In their minds, RCMP officers do not 'serve and protect' as many municipal force mottos assert. This dichotomy sets up a problem of organizational schizophrenia, a state in which the federal police are directed to conduct municipal mission and task for which they are inherently unsuited. The RCMP has the culture of a military force, and the expectations of a policing one - a hard collision of identity and perception that was meant to be a seamless blend of both..." (page 116)

I spent a good portion of the book wondering why it was women and girls in particular that are victims of violence.  But then there was an explanation that was eye-opening to me in a way that was sort of humbling that it needed to be explained to me.

Colonial legislation and policy deliberately set out to dismantle the long-held power of Indigenous women. Matriarchal and matrilineal traditions were swallowed up by patriarchal laws. The Indian Act, which already defined those registered under it as less than human, left women out entirely by classifying an Indian as a "male person" with "Indian blood." It forbade women from voting in band elections, holding leadership positions or even speaking at public meetings. It dictated that any Indigenous woman who married a man from another community - even if he was also Indigenous - lost her status. Children born to an Indigenous mother and a non-Indigenous father were denied status. This assimilatory provision, which sought to reduce the number of "Indians" in Canada, had the added effect of making Indigenous women who married outside their communities extremely vulnerable by cutting off family ties and support systems.

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Colonization slashed Indigenous women's power directly, but also implicitly. Stereotypes of Indigenous women as promiscuous abounded: settler society and the church frowned upon intermarriage between European men and Indigenous women; women were viewed as the "culprits" behind such arrangements. As Indigenous gender roles changed, Indigenous men absorbed the pervading colonial attitudes, becomes "acculturated into believing they had to think like white men." This meant a need to control women, a lack of respect for them and, often, violence toward them. In the power structure of Canada, Indigenous people were legislated to the bottom of the heap, and even below that were Indigenous women. (page 146-147)

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While I deeply admire this book and its incredibly clarity of explaining basic historical details in a relatable way and the deep research McDiarmid did about each of the cases she covered, including interviewing family members and police members involved in the investigation, it is not a perfect book. It goes back and forth in time, back and forth between cases, and that can cause confusion. And, honestly, because it covers so many cases, it's sometimes challenging to keep all the details straight. I think a timeline would have been helpful, as well as a directory of names. I also think it might have served the book better to have focused on two or three cases instead of one right after another after another. While that did make it clear that this problem is widespread, it did lessen the impact to read the same tragic tale repeatedly.  

This is definitely worth reading, though. 4/5 stars

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Things I looked up:

Michael Donahue (page 36 and other places) - A missing four-year-old boy whose case garnered a lot of media attention, frequently taking away the attention from the plight of many Highway of Tears victims

Clifford Olson (page 37) - A Canadian serial killer who confessed to murdering eleven children in British Columbia in the 1980s

Judge David William Ramsay (page 67) - A Canadian judge who was sent to prison on counts of sexual assault of minors, some of whom had appeared before him in court

silviculture (page 129) - the growing and cultivation of trees