Matt Smiley is proud of his film about the missing and murdered women of the Highway of Tears. Most importantly in his mind, the people connected to those victims are also happy with it.
When Smiley came to the area to visit family and friends, and started hearing the stories of vulnerable and missing women, he picked up his camera and went to work.
"I couldn't understand how the [broader national media] wasn't talking about it," he said.
He committed the next three years to researching, writing, filming, editing and producing his response to that lack of interest.
"It's mainly to continue the dialogue," he said. "You can't let society forget about the victims, and the dialogue has to go across Canada."
The RCMP has made the Highway of Tears cases a major priority with its own task force but, as Smily learned, victims' families were not always pleased with how the police treated their missing girls' cases.
Terry and Mary Teegee are some of northern B.C.'s most noted aboriginal advocates today. When they were youths, their cousin Ramona Wilson disappeared in Smithers and police told them they wouldn't act until enough time had gone by to ensure she wasn't just a runaway. Wilson had never been anything but dependable and diligently connected to her loved ones, the way any typical middle class kid would be. The only thing that made Wilson different was her skin colour.
A year later, her body was found and it is still an unsolved case, as are many of the other cases of missing and murdered girls and women, almost all of them aboriginal.
Further research is showing the Highway of Tears actually runs from the top of Canada to the bottom, from coast to coast with the common denominators being young, aboriginal females.
"You look at Canada's stature in the world," said Mary Teegee. "What you have to ask yourself is, why is this allowed to happen? Canadians need to ask themselves that question. If this was missing and murdered middle-class white kids, there would be a national inquiry by now."
Terry Teegee said the pattern actually extends beyond Canadian borders, but it is in Canada that our authorities can take protective action.
"It is the result of colonization," he said, showing similar statistics for Australia, the United States, and other nations where an incoming demographic group overwhelms the peoples indigenous to the area. He thought mainstream Canadians would feel upset by this, if only there was a movement to look at the details.
"What kind of society do you live in, if we are not equal and valued the same?," he said. "For the general public, they need to know this is happening in their country, which is known for being fair and just [yet] aboriginal women are throw-away citizens. Do you want to live in a society that thinks this way?"
The Teegees have seen Smiley's film and believe it to be one of the ways people might see the issues more clearly and feel the effects more personally. It was praised at the Toronto International Film Festival where it debuted last week as part of the Human Rights Watch intra-festival.
The film screens in Prince George tonight for a private audience. No dates have been set yet for a public screening locally but plans are in the works.
