Sixteen years ago , the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ( RCMP ) opened an investigation fence nine women andgirls who had choke missingor were found dispatch along a barren stint of roadway in northern British Columbia . The endeavor was dubbedProject atomic number 99 - PANA , key for the goddess that the Inuit people of Canada believecares for someone before they go to heaven or are reincarnated .
The number of women that the RCMP identified in its probe soon doubled , to 18 , and to keep the bit from climbing even higher , authorities set criterion on who would be included on the list . They had to be women or girls , they had to be involved in in high spirits - risk activity like thumb , and they had to be last seen — or their physical structure found — within a mile or so of Highways 16 , 97 or 5 in upper British Columbia .
TheHighway of Tears , as the principal expressway was dubbed , instantly became a symbol for unchecked violence against autochthonal cleaning woman and little girl in Canada . And it remains a symbol for the wildness — and the many reasons behind it — that endures today .
What Is the Highway of Tears?
The drive from Vancouver , B.C. , ( which is a small less than a three - minute ride from Seattle ) to the city of Prince George in northerly British Columbia look at about nine 60 minutes . From there , a western turn along Highway 16 to the larboard city of Prince Rupert is another eight 60 minutes .
It is that final 416 - mile ( 718 - klick ) section of wind , mostly two - lane highway between those two metropolis — through mount passes , wads of tiny Greenwich Village , countless lakes and a whole plenty of wilderness — that has become known as the Highway of Tears .
The remoteness of the highway , coupled with the fact that it bisects so many remote Indigenous community without access to decent transportation — often used by young Indigenous women hitchhiking simply as a mean of getting from one place to another along the long , lone route — puddle it a mature ground for violence .
" It ’s very , very detached . you’re able to push for 15 minutes and not see a cable car . There are rivers and mess . It ’s very heavily forested , " says Wayne Clary , a retire RCMP investigator who has been brought back to employment on the E - PANA vitrine . " It ’s interesting when we reckon at some of our slaying along there and we think , ' Was this a traveler who come upon this girl and had the opportunity to do what he did , or a local individual ? ' It ’s dark , and the winters are pretty spartan . You get a young missy hitchhiking and no one ’s around … there one second , give way the next . "
Giving Names to the Victims
In October 1969,Gloria Moody , a 26 - year - old mother of two and a phallus of the Bella Coola Indian Reserve of theNuxalk Nation , was found dead along one of the Highway of Tears roads , naked , pulsate and sexually assaulted . She became the first of the 18 women identified by the RCMP in the E - PANA task .
Over the next almost 40 class , 17 other cleaning woman became dupe along the main road . The last was 14 - class - oldAielah Saric Augerof theLheidli T’ennehFirst Nations community , near Prince George . Her almost - unrecognizable consistency was unwrap on an embankment of Highway 16 in February 2006 , eight days after she went miss .
At its zenith , more than 60 RCMP tec worked the slip along the Highway of Tears . But now , more than 15 years after Auger ’s body was found , barely a handful of police are still actively call for . No one has been added to the list since Auger , in 2006 . Project E - PANA now consists of 13 homicide investigations and five omit people ’s probe .
All the file , officially , continue open . But Clary has been point-blank in informing the victims ' families that many of the shell may never be work out .
" We ’ve had some success , " Clary says , mark thatDNA samplestied notoriousserial killerBobby Jack Fowlerto 16 - yr - old Highway of Tears dupe Colleen MacMillen , found dead along the Highway in 1974 . Fowler , surmise in at least two other Highway of Tears causa , died in an Oregon prison house in 2006 , before the connection in the MacMillen character was solidified . In 2019 , authorization also got a murder strong belief in the face ofMonica Jack . The 12 - yr - older miss went lacking in 1978 , but her remains were n’t establish until 1995.That opinion is under solicitation .
" We had a duet of very strong suspect , but just do n’t have the evidence . And we ’ve used everything in our toolkit that we can , " Clary add up . " I ’d say we ’ve probably ruled out a lot of bad guys , too . It ’s still ongoing , but … a lot of pee is under the bridge circuit . "
Getting Legal Justice
Carrier Sekani Family Services(CSFS ) , base in British Columbia , works to insure societal and legal DoJ for First Nations and other Indigenous crime syndicate . They start theHighway of Tears Initiativeto put into action 33 recommendation made in the 2006 Highway of Tears Symposium Recommendations Report .
The recommendations include measure like better transit options , increased police patrols , the establishment of cognizance and prevention programme among at - risk fair sex and their families , a widely - ranging metier campaign and hand brake set programme .
Yet the violence against endemic women , all across Canada , persist in . According to theCanadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and answerableness :
" It ’s far too vernacular . Even just this year alone , we ’ve had three former clients go missing , you know ? " says Elsie Wiebe , the Calls to Justice Coordinator with CSFS ’s Highway of Tears Initiative . " Just how common it is for Indigenous woman to go missing and be find dead , or not be found at all . It has a devastating impact . "
What still needs addressing , Wiebe and many other autochthonal peoples advocates say , are the underlying condition that result to the violence . A 2019 report from theNational Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girlsput it this way :
Project E - PANA has been the mellow - profile law probe ask missing and murdered endemic cleaning lady and miss , yet it touches on only a tiny fraction of the problem . Reliable statistic are hard to come by , butmore than 2,000 Indigenous womanhood and girlsin Canada have been report to have go missing or been murdered in the past three decades .
Some are poor or undereducated , victims of domesticated violence , drug abuser or are otherwise struggling in a larger society in which they are too often catch as outsiders in their own realm . But Wiebe aver that form of lazy descriptor is unfair and devalues the defining feature of autochthonous communities who have survived unmeasurable subjugation , racism and targeted wildness .
" The women and girl we ’ve lost along the Highway of Tears were turn back short in the middle of their goals , dream , education or careers . They all had full life sentence ahead of them and they leave behind loving families and friends who go forward to look for them and hold back for their return . Families and whole communities mourn them dearly , " say Wiebe . " Too often those who are miss or were murdered are below the belt framed as drug drug user or people in poverty survive speculative irresponsible lives and this negative stereotyping is not the truthful story or lived experience of those who we are missing . If the lives of each of these Indigenous women and girl had not been interrupted and take , some would today be our teachers , psychologist , doctors , mothers , Sister , aunties , daughter , grandmothers , married woman . "
state Wiebe : " I think it ’s really easy for the great unwashed to think that there ’s something lacking in these people . Well … it ’s what we steal . It ’s fourth dimension to reexamine how we do up these citizenry to insure that they flush it . "
Today Along the Highway of Tears
These years , billboards dot the shoulders of the Highway of Tears , warning against hitchhiking , even as the pattern remains , to many underserviced Indigenous communities , a elemental and necessary means of change of location . Clary and other law enforcement authorities keep to sing to the medium and work the Highway of Tears cases , hop that someone , somewhere saw something or heard something and will come forward .
CSFS has of late been awarded new backing in its efforts to tolerate families of presently miss women and girls and others affected by violence against woman . May 5 , 2022 , will again be a national day of consciousness for Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls ( MMIWG ) in Canada .
Meanwhile , the Highway of Tears roll on , a tragic and long-lived symbolic representation of a problem that stretch across the breadth and largeness of Canada , and much of the world .
" It ’s not just Canada . It ’s not just North America , " Wiebe says . " We need to be cognizant of howresidential schools[the nearly C - retentive system that the government used to indoctrinate autochthonal small fry into European / Christian acculturation in Canada ] and colonialism are not a thing of the past . There ’s still body of work to be done to loosen those colonial practices . There ’s still policy that are dead unfair and biased against Indigenous multitude . We want to look at that … and we need to really see and honour Indigenous people and families for their strength and looker and resilience . We all need to take a personal look at ourselves , and identify the ways that we have bias and behaviour that are discriminatory . "
