I was sad to read the recent story of another missing woman in Prince George, Genny Lee Paquette.
I felt compelled to send a letter to the editor to offer my observations.
Whenever a plea is made to the public for information on missing aboriginal persons in Prince George, The Citizen traditionally posts what appears to be a mug shot.
Whenever there is a public appeal for help locating a Caucasian person the picture is representative of a happy smiling individual, as was the case with the unfortunate appeal seeking information on the whereabouts of Matthew John White.
When aboriginal woman are pictured in this manner it marginalizes them, risking disparaging judgments by the public.
I am appealing to the editor of The Citizen to make every effort availed to them to probe for a photograph that does not appear to be a "police" mug shot but one that validates these woman's lives.
I would hope the point of running missing persons stories is to motivate the public to help locate them and visually criminalizing aboriginal women likely deters people from paying the same level of attention compared to visually depicting a person as a happy individual with family.
I encourage The Citizen to try and find more appropriate photos when they choose to run stories of missing persons, especially aboriginal women where there are hundreds of pictures to prove my point.
I wonder if Ms. Paquette were a young, Caucasian mother would the photograph be the same as the one chosen for Ms. Paquette or much different?
Every aboriginal woman is someone's daughter, sister or mother and surely family must have access to more appropriate photographs.
Citizen, please do your diligence when posting these missing person appeals and the photographs that accompany them.
Miranda Schmold
Prince George
(Editor's Note: Thanks for writing, Miranda. We run the photograph provided by the RCMP for missing persons cases. In the interest of getting word out of someone missing, we post the photo and story online and in the newspaper as quickly as possible, rather than trying to contact the family for a more flattering image. Sometimes family members follow up with more photographs and we're happy to publish those, too. The photo we published of Matthew John White was a handout photo from the RCMP and he was not smiling in the image.)
