Recently in Astu, our class has been focusing on the issues surround the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Last class we watched a film title “Finding Dawn” which introduces the story of Dawn Crey, a woman who went missing from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Dawn Crey’s DNA/remains were found on the farm of Robert Pickton, a serial killer from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, believed to have killed up to 49 women. Robert Pickton was a pig farmer of British Columbia and his story is one I have become quite familiar with. His farm was located all but a few steps away from my high school and no matter how many years pass, his story is equally terrifying every time I hear it. Pickton was not completely innocent before the discovery of his murders, In 1998 he attempted to murder/brutally assaulted a sex worker, however he was NOT charged!
During the film, viewers meet Dawn’s older brother who has become a spokesperson for the families of the missing women, especially those of Aboriginal descent. He comments bluntly and quite plausibly that because many of the women missing were of aboriginal descent, or poor and living in the Downtown eastside that the Police failed to act as seen fit. He mentions that he believes that if the women had been of wealthier families, or even had mainly been of Caucasian descent the Police would have acted faster and with more determination, and it saddens me to say – I think he’s right.
The Downtown Eastside has a large aboriginal community, something I noticed very quickly in high school when I would join a group of students on a monthly trip to a soup kitchen. I often stopped at the cork board on the wall, reading the many papers attached to it containing warnings of dangerous people, of assults and criminal activity and the faces of missing people – often women, and often aboriginal people. I had the opportunity to speak to some of the women we had the opportunity to serve, and almost every single one of them wore a beautiful smile. We shared stories and laughter and everything in between. Their only difference being, they had not been as lucky to be born into the families and lifestyles we are priviledged to have, nor were they given they opportunities that we were able to take. However, they are treated and looked down upon, they are seen as extremely different. But they aren’t. Every one of them and the one’s before them are human beings, just like all of us. So why were they ignored? As the lawyer of around 17 different families of the victims of Pickton, Cameron Ward stated, “I think our society has the right and the need to determine why the investigation unfolded the way it did, and why, for so many years this man was allowed to prey on vulnerable women in the Downtown Eastside.” He later comments “I’m not confident that sufficient lessons have been learned, …. This was Canada’s most horrific mass serial murder, and nothing I’ve read so far has convinced me that something similar couldn’t happen again.” How was Pickton able to begin killing women in the early 1990’s but wasn’t caught until 2002? How had so many women gone missing from the Downtown Eastside for so long?
This is a link to an article about the case against Robert Pickton and the failings of the Justice System: