If This Was Your Daughter: The Tragedy of #MMIW

Although missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is a heartbreaking problem in Canada, I've always had difficulties knowing how to write about it until I listened to the podcast In Her Defence 50th Street hosted by Jana Pruden. This excellent podcast is the story of how, in 2010, 20-year-old Amber Tuccaro left her home in the Indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, went to Edmonton with her 14-month-old son Jacob and disappeared. 

As a clinician, I've learned there’s truth to be had in each patient case - it brings to light individual suffering and also highlights aspects of how the disease impacts others. This excellent podcast does just that - highlights the suffering of Amber, her family and friends and explains a disease that has caused suffering for thousands of Canadian families. 

The story of Amber has numerous aspects that are similar to many families: a young single mother, devoted to her 14-mont-old baby, Jacob, loving her family, full of laughter and took the ups and downs of family life in her stride. It's the story of so many of us. The trip she took is one that many young single mothers take, an outing with her friend and her baby to a city not too far away from home. There are more details we can certainly pull apart but the foundations of her life are like many young women's lives today -  the way forward is to see the commonality of our shared lives. 

Amber, like any young person, was excited to be close to a new city and decided to hitchhike there the night she went missing, leaving her friend to babysit Jacob. Why hitchhike? Again, it is common that young, single mothers don't have money for expensive taxis. When she didn’t return by the next day, her friend called her mother, Vivian Tuccaro, who then called the RCMP. 

Vivian's interaction with the RCMP is the stuff of a mother's nightmares, beginning with the police telling her, "Well maybe she’s out partying and she will call or whatever."

Vivian explained, "No, Amber doesn’t leave her baby anywhere."

Imagine being a mother with a missing daughter and being dismissed like this. But this was just the beginning of the interaction gone bad with the RCMP. As the days and weeks passed, and Amber's family were increasingly worried - nay, scared - and Amber's mother persisted in insisting Amber's case be taken seriously. Not only was it not taken seriously, but Vivian found out that the RCMP, "took her off the missing persons list after one month despite no one seeing her...it took me one month to get her back on the missing persons list. I got the run around."..."What’s worse, Vivian is left to wonder if any of Amber’s personal property the police collected could have been used as evidence — it was destroyed when she was taken off the missing persons list."

If you think this story can't get worse, it does. It took the RCMP till Aug. 28, 2012, to release a cell phone conversation Amber had while in the company of an unidentified man who might have been responsible for abducting her. On Sept. 1, 2012, just four days after the audio was released, Amber’s remains were found on a rural property near Leduc County by horseback riders."

It took the RCMP another eight years to finally apologize saying in 2020: "Alberta RCMP apologized for how it handled Tuccaro's case. A deputy commissioner said it was "not our best work." 

I submit that apology without comment. 

The tragedy of Amber's abduction and death bring up so many questions. If the RCMP had taken this abduction seriously initially, could they have saved Amber's life? How long after she was abducted did Amber live and how many opportunities to find her were missed? Why, even with this recording of the man who probably abducted Amber, has her killer not been found? 

The podcast discusses how Amber's case has so many similarities with other missing and murdered Indigenous women, that there may well be a serial killer or killers who are still on the loose and continuing to kill. Finding Amber's killer could still save lives.

Amber was unique but the dismal handling of her family's concern and the lack of good police work by the RCMP was not and this explains why there was a 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The Native Women's Association of Canada maintains a list of nearly 600 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people across the country, over the span of 20 years. Indigenous women face murder rates more than ten times the national average and the Native Women’s Association of Canada "has found that only 53% of murder cases involving Aboriginal women and girls have led to charges of homicide. This is dramatically different from the national clearance rate for homicides in Canada, which was last reported as 84%." This is such a pervasive problem that it has its own hashtag: #MMIW. 

So where did the inquiry lead? In 2023, four years after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released 231 calls for justice, the CBC did a report card on progress on the issue of taking all necessary measures to prevent, investigate, punish and compensate for violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. The report card stated: "Not started".

This should take our breath away. Asking for a diligent investigation of missing women is something we all expect the police to do. This case is one among many that makes it clear this is not being done for missing indigenous women, and this is a travesty.

If your daughter was missing, would this be acceptable? Would you not want more? If someone was allowed to kill your daughter because the police don't take the life of your daughter seriously enough to find her quickly and then, allowed the killer to wander free killing more women, what would you feel? This, in a nutshell is the disease that we live with as more Indigenous women are being adducted and murdered as you read this. 

How does this tragedy get turned around? There are excellent recommendations and they should be acted upon. For those of us - and I include myself in this - who are at times overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues around missing and murdered Indigenous women, it's helpful to not lose sight of the essence of the problem and basis of all the solutions, eloquently elucidated by Amber's mother, Vivian: "have more respect and more compassion. You know, don’t just treat her like she’s nothing. I’m not just speaking for Amber but for all the missing and murdered.” 

If this was your daughter, you would want this for her.

#MMIW