The uncomfortable truth about BC's Highway of Tears that gets shouted down:
The Highway of Tears (Highway 16 in northern British Columbia) is a tragedy. Dozens of mostly Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered there since the late 1960s. Families deserve answers, and vulnerable people deserve real protection, not just hashtags, prayers and inquiries.
But the dominant narrative.... that this is primarily about White serial killers, racism, colonialism, or "society" hunting Indigenous women, ignores the data on who is actually killing who. Most solved cases of murdered Indigenous women in this country involve perpetrators from their own communities. A RCMP report from 2015 showed that pprox. 70% of offenders in solved Aboriginal female homicides were of Aboriginal origin. More recent Statistics CAnada analysis (2014-2021) found 86% of accused in Indigenous female homicides were Indigenous themselves.
Indigenous homicide victimization rates are dramatically higher than the national average. Around 6 times higher overall to be exact. Indigenous women face elevated risks too, but the pattern holds. Native on Native violence drives a lot of it, often tied to domestic/intimate partner situations, family, acquaintances, substance abuse, and dysfunction in some communities.
Solved cases along the Highway of Tears (yes they're not all mysteries) reflect this. Yes, there are some outsiders like Bobby Jack Fowler (American drifter) or Cody Legebokoff, but many others involve local dynamics. Not every tragedy fits the "interracial predator" story.
Blaming everything on external forces or historical grievances lets communities avoid hard conversations about internal problems: higher rates of family violence, addiction, poverty cycles, and breakdown that statistics show hit Indigenous populations harder. Ignoring that doesn't save lives, it allows the cycle to repeat itself. Real solutions need truth over comforting (but incomplete) narratives. Addressing root causes inside communities won't be comfortable for many.
The victims, Indigenous or not, deserve better than politicized myths. Focus on what actually reduces violence. The stats tell us the problems.