Description
Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid (paperback ed.) is an account of Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or have been found murdered through stories of their lives. The 725-kilometre stretch of highway in British Columbia known as Highway of Tears or Highway 16, includes the River Skeena, and has sparked a national crisis of tragedy and travesty for the missing and murdered women and girls who are associated with it. Highway of Tears recognizes that we can try to understand what has happened, where we went wrong, address the myriad factors that make Indigenous women and girls vulnerable to ensure it doesn’t happen again and to remember them and which is the focus of this book. Mary Teegee, Maaxsw Gibuu (White Wolf), child and family service and childcare advocate says in the foreword that this book is a tribute to all our warriors who demand justice for those who no longer have a voice. Statistics show that Indigenous women and girls have higher rates of vulnerability within an already higher rate of violence towards Indigenous peoples compared to non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. Too often forgotten is that behind every death or disappearance is a human being and those who love them, a web of family and community and friendship – bonds that we form to make us strong and when broken tear us apart. Highway of Tears is comprised of 15 telling chapters: A Bright Light, A Brick Wall, Part Of You Is Missing, Falling Through the Cracks, The Not Knowing, An Inch Shy Of A Mile, Blatant Failures, It Depends Who’s Bleeding, Rising Tides, Breaking A Spirit, This We Have To Live With Every Day, Where Were you Twenty Years Ago?, Canada’s Dirtiest Secret, Winding Down, and The Last Walk. The Epilogue: A Safer Place, A Note on Sources, Notes, Photo Credits, Index and Acknowledgements complete this work. This book was a finalist for the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize, Finalist for the 2020 Hubert Evan Non-Fiction Prize, a national bestseller, A Hill Times Best Book of the Year.