Statistic on missing and murdered Indigenous Women are incredibly difficult to develop. The Urban Indian Health Institute statistic say that while 5,712 cases were reported of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, though the US Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database in 2016 (which is likely an undercount) only 116 of them were logged in the nationwide information clearinghouse (NamUS) DOJ database. (click here for a PDF of thier report) The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women.

Canada has done a much better job then the US but the June 2019 report said there was no “reliable estimate of the numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls”. However given the similar histories what Canda did find can inform us of our own situation.

Canada did not maintain a database for missing people until 2010, which made it difficult to determine the rate at which Indigenous women are murdered or go missing, or to compare their data to those of other populations. Various groups have collected the following data from different periods of time and using different criteria.

From 1980 to 2012, Indigenous women and girls represented 16% of all female homicides in Canada while comprising only 4% of the female population in Canada.
A 2011 Statistics Canada report estimated that between 1997 and 2000, the rate of homicides for Indigenous women was almost seven times higher than other women. A 2007 study by the province of Saskatchewan – the only province to have systematically reviewed its missing persons files for cases involving Indigenous women – Indigenous women were found to have made up 6% of the province’s population, and 60% of the province’s missing women cases

While homicides for non-Indigenous women declined between 1980 and 2015, the number of Indigenous women who were victims of homicide increased from 9% of all female homicide victims in 1980, to 24% in 201