It is time for the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper To Open An Inquiry into the cases of missing & murdered Aboriginal Canadian women.

The Winter Olympics, in Vancouver British Columbia,  has received positive media attention from around the world. The Winter Olympics is supposed to illustrate to the world that Canada is a great multicultural nation. Meanwhile, beneath the surface of  the Winter Olympics is the fact Canada is still very  racially stratified.

However, yesterday, there was a quiet, dignified, protest in downtown Vancouver. The focus of the protest is  to raise awareness about the  missing, murdered, Aboriginal Canadian women across Canada.

The statistics are shocking,  over  five hundred  Aboriginal women have disappeared or have been killed across Canada. The  eerie silence of the Harper government  to these tragedies is not surprising but still disturbing.

Some of the Aboriginal women missing and murdered  were sex workers & drug addicts.  Why does it matter to Canadians that some of these First Nations women were  prostitutes? The topic of prostitution is an incendiary issue because some people confuse prostitution with morality. Sex workers are professionals, their job is to provide a service for their customers. Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession for a reason. The heterosexual men demand the services of female prostitutes.

Don’t sex workers and drug users deserve the same human rights as other Canadians?

It appears in Canada, there is an elitist essentialism that prostitutes and drug addicts do not deserve Canada’s respect or support.

The sex workers in British Columbia and across Canada are providing a service to the middle and upper class Canadian men that buy their services. The clients of  the prostitutes are Canadian men from across the class and social spectrum. For example, clients of the prostitutes are  doctors, garbage men, teachers, bus drivers, politicians,  judges, police men,  parents, brothers, fathers, grandfathers, uncles.

The question remains, why hasn’t  Prime Minister Stephen Harper opened an inquiry into  the violence against  First Nations women?  Canadians must become informed about the fact First Nations women are devalued in Canada. The Canadian government must have a more proactive approach to assisting Aboriginal women to have more agency over their own lives.

Aboriginal women encounter multiple forms of oppression in Canada in relation to  their race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, and employment status.

Since Aboriginal women are marginalized, they are viewed as inferior by the hegemonic, Canadian system, that values the “Mythical Norm” over women of colour.