Australia looks to Canada as it launches inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women

WARNING: This story contains images and names of people who are deceased. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be advised. It also contains distressing details of physical and sexual assaults.

Australia will launch an inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children after the country's Senate voted to form a committee to investigate systemic causes of violence. 

The motion to launch the inquiry was brought by Sen. Dorinda Cox and Sen. Lidia Thorpe — both Indigenous women who are senators for the Australian Greens political party. Cox and Thorpe are also both family members of murdered Indigenous women.

These women have never had justice, Thorpe told the Senate when the motion was tabled on Nov. 25. 

"No justice, because they weren't important enough for investigations to happen around those murders." 

Thorpe, a DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman based in Melbourne, said her cousin was killed and dumped on a family member's front lawn. 

Among the duties of the Senate inquiry will be to investigate the number of First Nations women and children who are missing or murdered in Australia. Although some data is collected by police services state-by-state, there is currently no national database tracking the number of women and children who have vanished or been killed.

Cox, who is a Noongar-Yamatji woman based in Perth, said she is aware of 76 cases of missing and murdered women across the country. 

In her home state of Western Australia, Aboriginal people make up 17.5 per cent of unsolved missing persons cases, but only three per cent of the state's population, according to data collected by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019.

Cox is a former police officer, but says she sometimes felt powerless in that role. 

"I've been on the inside of the machinery working and I've seen it first-hand, about how the conscious and unconscious bias exists when we're talking about First Nations people," she said.

"About the need to make excuses not to investigate particular cases when First Nations people go missing or they are murdered."

The inquiry will also examine disparities between how deaths of First Nations women and children are investigated and resourced compared with cases involving non-First Nations individuals. 

Systemic causes of violence against women and children will also be examined.