Why do brown-skinned women go missing more frequently in colonized countries?

A Luther College professor wants to know why brown-skinned women go missing more frequently in colonized countries.

"I was teaching a feminist theory class last winter and I showed my students a film called Senorita Extraviada. It's about missing women in Juarez, Mexico," said Brenda Anderson, who teaches women's studies at the University of Regina. "These good students, they said, 'What do we do about this?' Out of that class actually there's a conference being organized by students and myself."

Brenda Anderson is planning a unique course that will study the issue of missing indigenous women.

"Societally we all have a responsibility to ensure that everyone is protected and everyone is safe," she said. "That's where we were all coming from, that we need to stand in solidarity with indigenous community members."

"There's a history of colonization. There is a history of neo-colonial policies and there's a history of societal disregard for violence against indigenous women," she said. "This is constructing a society where (indigenous women) are targets of violence and that's not fair."

For more information on the August conference, contact Anderson at brenda.anderson@uregina.ca.

A Saskatchewan database of all missing persons is available at the Saskatchewan Chiefs of Police Web site (http://www.sacp.ca/).

LINK: Studying The Mystery