Time to break the silence

When five-year-old Frank Young went missing from his rural Indigenous community in northern Saskatchewan on April 19, the only thing you could hear was the silence.

The silence caused by his absence, yes, but also the silence of the airwaves, of radio, television and other forms of mass communication. Young’s disappearance apparently didn’t meet the criteria for an Amber Alert, so he joined hundreds of other Indigenous people, especially women and girls, who have vanished without a sound.

Indeed, while the 2019 report from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls stressed there are limited reliable statistics on the issue, studies indicate that Indigenous people disappear and die at a far higher rate than other ethnic groups in Canada.

For example, in Saskatchewan, which keeps relatively reliable statistics on missing Indigenous people, some 45 per cent of those missing are aboriginal. And according to Statistics Canada, the homicide rate for Indigenous women is seven times that of other women.

With numbers like that you’d expect to hear a deafening outcry, but the response, including from much of the media and the police, is often muted. And advocates charge that this is one of the reasons serial killers like Robert Pickton, who confessed to murdering 49 women in British Columbia, are able to operate with impunity.

Consequently, Indigenous communities have taken it upon themselves to publicize disappearances. Community members post photographs and messages on Facebook and other social media sites and they utilize Aboriginal Alert, a community-run website that shares information about missing aboriginal people.

Yet while Indigenous communities can and should play a lead role in the effort, they should not have to go it alone. They have neither the reach nor the resources of formal alert systems such as Amber Alert. But as the Frank Young case demonstrates, disappearances, even of five-year-old children, do not always qualify for such alerts.

Advocates have therefore been calling for the development of an analogous alert system for Indigenous peoples. In contrast to the limited reach of localized community efforts, an Indigenous alert system could post information about disappearances on highway messages boards and through mobile phones, radio and television.

Furthermore, the system could serve to enhance trust and information sharing between Indigenous communities and the police by improving communication among aboriginal, local, provincial and federal authorities.

While no such system currently exists in Canada, Washington state recently passed a measure to commence Indigenous alerts and the system is expected to be up and running by June 9. State Representative Debra Lekanoff, an Indigenous woman who spearheaded the effort, greeted the news by saying that “the unheard screams of missing and murdered people will (now) be heard across Washington state.”

We, too, need to pierce the silence and hear about Indigenous people who go missing. An alert system could do just that and could take any number of forms, be it a standalone service or a hybrid model incorporated into the Amber Alert system.

In fact, Indigenous alerts could form part of an array of notifications including “silver” alerts — alerts concerning the disappearance of vulnerable adults, such as those with intellectual and cognitive disabilities. There’s always the risk of people becoming inured to alerts if they receive too many, but that concern can be allayed somewhat if the notifications are targeted geographically.

In any case, whatever the final form of Indigenous alerts, a system is clearly needed. After all, when we pierce the silence, it ought to be with the sound of joy.

Indigenous alert system could post information about missing people on highway messages boards and through mobile phones, radio and television