Nuanced. - 127. Jessica McDiarmid: The Highway of Tears, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Reconciliation

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Jessica McDermott discusses her book "Highway of Tears," which illuminates the pressing call for justice, understanding, and societal reform for National Truth and Reconciliation Day. She delves into topics such as the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry, racism and pathways to reconciliation.Jessica McDiarmid is a Canadian journalist who has worked across North America and Africa, writing for publications such as the Toronto Star, Chatelaine, the Associated Press, Maisonneuve, the Harvard Review and many others. Her first book, Highway of Tears, was a finalist for the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize and the BC/Yukon Book Prize. Learn more: https://jessicamcdiarmid.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. National Truth and Reconciliation Day and National Indigenous People's Day highlight the importance of education. As always, I view it as a privilege and a responsibility to give listeners the opportunity to hear from influential voices on these topics. Today, I'm speaking with the author of The Highway of Tears, a story of racism, indifference, and the pursuit of justice.

My guest today is Jessica McDermott. Jessica, such an honor to be sitting down with you. I find your book so inspiring. Would you mind introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted? Thanks so much for having me, Erin. So I'm an investigative journalist in Canada and the author of one book, High Wave Tears, and do most of my work, you know, on issues surrounding, human rights and social justice.

You wrote the book Highway of Tears and we're on the eve of National Truth and Reconciliation Day. I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind helping us understand this from your perspective, having this in-depth knowledge of what is taking place in the past and what's going on today. There are some comments about how it's a stat holiday, it's a day off for people, and then there's other perspectives around this is a day of learning, this is a day of community of us coming together what is your perspective on national truth and reconciliation day i think that it's a small step um in the right direction when it comes to you know general uh broad canadian society

recognizing um the harms that have been done uh in in this country and um you know the truth part of it, the truth coming out, people knowing the truth, and then beginning the journey towards writing those wrongs and reconciliation. So I would hope it's a day that people take really seriously. You know, it's a day to honor and respect the many people who have been affected, who've been harmed by this, to educate ourselves, to educate the people around us. and to think about how we can pursue a better and more just future. Do you have any advice for individuals as this day nears on how you would recommend them taking the steps?

Of course, from my perspective, they should pick up your book Highway of Tears. But I'm wondering if there's other sources of information that you think they should be looking out for, whether it be movies, TV shows, books. How do people best utilize this day? Yeah, I mean, I think that it's different for everyone and what the right thing is going to be different for everyone. So, I mean, I would really just encourage people to seek out, you know, the knowledge that they need. And there's so many sources now. I mean, there's incredible books. There's incredible indigenous authors in this country.

who've done amazing work I mean telling their stories telling other stories writing fiction pick up those books or audio books you know

Michelle Good for example her first novel Five Little Indians and then she's just had a nonfiction collection of essays come out very recently

called truth telling Helen Knott wrote an amazing memoir called in my own moccasins that came out a few years ago and has another book called Becoming a Matriarch that just was released

I think this month like seek out those voices there's so much wisdom so much incredible literary writing ability incredible stories and you know look for events in your in your communities

lots of nations do things to mark this day and some of those you know the public is invited and yeah I think it's just a day to really listen, listen to the stories and messages reflect on them, and, you know, hopefully we can all work together to use this day and every day to improve our world. I think that at this point in time, based on having all of these years of research, that enough

is being done to push progress forward. We talked about how this is a small step. Do you think we're moving in the right direction? In some cases, the right direction, but not nearly enough as being done. I'm hoping we can dive into your book Highway of Tears. I have it right here, and I've had the privilege of reading it over the past few months. I'm wondering if we could start with how the book came about for you, the roots, and the journey of actually doing the investigation and gathering the information. Yeah. So I grew up outside of a town. It's about halfway along what's now known as the Highway of Tears. So the Highway of Tears, as, you know, largely defined by the families, is a stretch of Highway 16 from Prince George to Prince Rupert, sort of from central to northwestern British Columbia. And along that highway, many indigenous girls and women have gone missing.

And some, you know, have been found murdered. Many have never been found at all. So I grew up in a town called Smithers, which is about halfway along this highway. And growing up, it was just, I mean, it was something that as a settler in that area, you heard a little bit about, you know, as a kid, I remember seeing posters, missing posters of two of the girls who were from Smithers, Ramona Wilson and Delphine Nicole. And Delphine had disappeared in 1990

and then Ramona in 1994. And, you know, they were a few years older than me. And so you would see that and wonder about it. But, like, you heard very little when you consider what it was. This is a really small town. where I can't remember how long it had been, but, you know, rarely do people go missing there. Rarely are there homicides there. And yet, when these things were happening to these young indigenous girls,

it was really not spoken of all that much. There wasn't a lot of attention paid to it, which always, you know, seemed odd. But I think as a kid, you have nothing else to compare it to. but as I got older, and I began to hear about all these other cases that were happening in other communities along the highway, you know,

it was just something that really stays with you. And then once I had a larger sort of context in the world and saw what happened in other places when maybe a different kind of victim, a person went missing, then I think that the, you know, the unfairness and the disparity in response and attention just became more and more clear. So it was something that, you know, as I got into journalism, I'd always thought there should be a book about this. There should be this sort of fulsome examination of all of this, a place where all the information is.

because even to find information on a lot of these incidents was still is not that easy. Yeah, and so then, you know, I think when I was 23, I'd gone to journalism school and then decided that I was like, it was time to write the Highway of Tears book. And so I went home for a summer and I interviewed some of the families and, you know, reached out to people. did a lot of kind of preliminary research, looking at old newspapers and, you know,

making timelines and just trying to wrap my head around it. But I realized fairly quickly, you know, in that six-week period, that it took a lot more than that to write a book. And probably, I was very, very overwhelmed. And so I kind of put it on hold. But in a sense, I put it on hold, but really, I mean, it just needed. more time. I think, you know, I needed more time to, you know, grow as a human being. And, um, but some of those relationships, um, that started at that time, uh, that was the first, you know, times I sat down and met with some of the family members. And then for a decade, or close to a decade after, stayed in touch with them, followed, you know, the stories. And

unfortunately, part of those stories was more people going missing, um, in some cases, being found murdered, and just sort of learning about it. And then, yeah, years later, then I was sort of at the point where I put together a book proposal and then moved back there and spent, you know, four years working on what eventually became the high-wave tears. How hard was it, how hard was it to put this together from your perspective, being able to look back on it now? How difficult was it?

really hard. I think if anybody knew how hard it is to write a book, you would maybe not do it. And then I think it's something where you sort of forget, you forget how hard it was. So then you keep doing it. You know, then you're like, I really want to do it again and I'm going to do it again. But yeah, it was really difficult. I mean, I had so much to learn. So it wasn't just writing a book. It was also, I mean, learning that my view of Canada, the history that I had been taught growing up, that was sort of the accepted history in many circles of Canada, you know, all of that was wrong. And so, I mean, I, it was a huge re-education, as well as, you know, the research and the interviews and the writing of a book. So, yeah, it was, it was difficult. But, I mean, such a necessary thing and something I'm so grateful for.

I had incredible, incredible teachers. You know, so many of the family members taught me so much and, you know, we're willing to take the time to welcome me into communities and include me in events. And, you know, and so I hope that the time and effort they put into me that I was able to share that with others. My next question is around meeting with the families. What was that process like to be held?

heading into the room to be sitting down with individuals who have been through such loss, such trauma, and try and navigate those conversations where you do need insights in order to tell the story, but it's a vulnerable topic. And many people in their day-to-day lives avoid the heavy topics. They don't look for talking about the difficult things going on. We often talk about how we don't talk about the tough things going on in our life enough. and here you are heading into this very difficult conversation. Well, I mean, I'd worked by that point. I'd worked in journalism for probably about a decade.

You know, so I, to an extent, had those kinds of conversations and done those sorts of interviews before, but certainly never, you know, so many or in such detail and in such depth. It was really important to me that the process was sensitive, respectful, and as much as possible, you know, wasn't re-traumatizing families and gave families as much control as possible and as they wanted. And so, you know, one of the big differences with a book compared to working. you know, at a newspaper where there's daily deadlines was that it could really take time to get to know people and let people get to know me, build relationships, and then, you know, I'll leave it up to them whether they wanted to participate and how they wanted to

participate. So that often by the time we actually sort of were sitting down a little more formally to do an interview, it wasn't the first conversation in most cases or the first time we'd known each other. And I think that made it a lot more comfortable for both of us. And that's something that I've sort of carried forward in my work. You know, where possible, I meet somebody for coffee and have a chat. And it's, you know, nothing on the record. It's just to get to know people. And so they can, you know, get to know me before they make a decision whether they want to be a part of something I'm working on. Yeah. And then I guess, I mean, it's, it's an incredible honor to do that kind of work. It's an incredible honor for somebody to share

their lost loved one with you. And it's also definitely, I mean, it's a way, because, you want to do it right and you want to do it justice and you don't want to do any further harm and so how to proceed and what, you know, how the process should work and then what the result is, you know, it was just, I think it was heavy because of the subject matter and it was heavy because I cared so much about it and, you know, how it turned out any impact it had. Do you mind for people who might not know, just you've mentioned their names, but would you mind laying out some of the people who are involved in the book, some of the people that you highlight?

Yeah. So, I mean, when I started out on the book, I had the list that has sort of been the most widely circulated one that the RC&P has of cases, unsolved cases on the Highway of Tears and then several other highways in British Columbia. So

for the Highway of Tears region specifically there was nine girls and women on that RCMP list. But then as I worked on the book, I heard, I mean every community you went

to, you would hear more names. One of the first things I did working on the book was to attend a opening ceremony for a memorial walk down the highway of tears that was in June 2016. And, you know, along that walk, which ultimately, I mean, they invited me to go the entire distance, which I did. It took us about three and a half weeks, but every community that you would get to, you would hear more names. So what became, you know, the stories in the book, there were a lot more than I had initially thought would be there because there was a lot more girls in missing than I hadn't had known about. But some of the really key characters, you know, in this story, because

they are families who have lost loved ones and also you know some of the advocates and then they become some of the advocates who have pushed this issue for decades and ensured that it's i mean i said issue but it's not an issue it's it's human beings you know who are who are lost and it's it's girls who who are taken um and they haven't let those those stories die and they've tried to find solutions by pushing governments and agencies and police forces and the Canadian public to care and to change the situation. So some of those, I mean, Brenda Wilson, who is the sister of Ramona Wilson, who disappeared in Smithers in 2000, or sorry, in 1994, and then was found murdered the next year.

and Brenda has been working really non-stop on this since 1994. Gladys Raddick, who is the aunt of Tamara Chitman and Tamara vanished from Prince Rupert 18 years ago as of September 21st. And Gladys is another person who I can't remember how many times she's walked across Canada. I think it might be eight times doing memorial walks. across Canada, you know, showing up in Ottawa with petitions, that sort of work. So, I mean, those are two of many, many people who have been working on this for a really long time. I interviewed Marian Buller, Judge, and the Chief Commissioner for the Chief Commissioner for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls' Inquiry.

I'm wondering if you could help us differentiate between her report and yours. book? What are the differences? What were you able to pull from this that perhaps her report might have been missing or lacking it? Obviously, readability is a big one that stands out to me. Yeah, I mean, they're very different things. I mean, the report of a national inquiry, I mean, for one, it's really national in scope. The book looks at the national picture, but it's fairly focused on this geographic region and, you know, the girls and women and their families from this geographic region. And then obviously the way that you put it together, it's a narrative telling the stories, whereas, you know, a report is going to have probably more

analysis of systems and regulations. And then also, you know, I know that they want to to be very sensitive and delicate with how with treating the stories of survivors, how those were treated, how those were presented if they were presented because obviously you want, you want people

to be able to address a national inquiry but perhaps they don't want that to become, you know, something that's completely in the public sphere, which is very fair. Yeah, and then of course the report the Commissioner Buller and the other commissioners came up with

had 231 calls for justice which you know probably beyond the scope of any nonfiction book I'm also wondering about the role of journalism in this kind of conversation because it seems like you're able to touch on something for the general public that an inquiry just isn't able to get to it's not as relatable, understandable, in this time where we're seeing journalism is facing so many different challenges. I just feel like your book really highlights the importance of journalism,

the impact it can have, and how it creates an informed society. I hope so. I mean, I believe that. I agree with that. That's why I do it. Yeah, and I think you're right in that there's, I am much more likely to, pick up a book at a bookstore, a library about a topic that I'm interested in, then I am to download a 3,000 word report and read that. You know, and I hope that I think stories have a way of helping us speak to each other and helping us hear each other as humans and in a way that, you know, probably reports official documentation just doesn't. And whether those stories are told a podcast or in a book or in a in a documentary or even sometimes in a fictionalized version of a

true story um i mean i think this is this is totally embarrassing um and there's so many problems with this movie that uh you know i wasn't aware of when i watched it when i was way younger but the movie blood diamond you know about resource extraction and its impact on conflict in west Africa and I watched that and I was like what diamonds that people wear on their fingers are funding like wars that are doing this and I was appalled and I because I watched that movie I went and took out a whole bunch of books and I you know wanted to learn a lot more and then not that long in the future found myself living working in Sierra Leone so I think you know stories I hope have this ability to influence us to learn more and also to change.

What is the story from your perspective looking at it? Is this a tragedy? Is this a story of resilience and overcoming? How do you think about what the final product was? You know, it really is both of those things. And you might have learned, like, notice the very long subtitle. And it's, you know, a story. of racism, indifference, and the pursuit of justice.

Because I had sort of gotten, like, racism and indifference and, like, tragedy. But I didn't, it's not just a tragedy. I mean, a tragedy is sort of, to me, sort of speaks of some terrible and avoidable thing happening. That's really sad. And this is a terrible thing. It is not inavoidable. it's not unpreventable it is you know we can stop it um and i also you know i wanted that

subtitle to honor and recognize the resilience the strength uh the determination of you know families and and their their supporters in in not allowing this to just be a sad tragedy, you know, a sad story in changing it, in preventing it so that it does not happen again. And so that, you know, maybe there can be some justice for some of these girls and women. In chapter one, you highlighted a statement from Angeline on the Walk, and it was from Martin Luther King Jr., which is, he who passionately accepts evil, is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who passively accepts evil without protesting it

is really cooperating with it. And when you had this part of the book, what I was thinking of is one of the challenges we have right now is so many people talk about, I didn't know about Indian residential schools. I had no idea that that was going on. And for where I am in the Fraser Valley, Mission Indian Residential School is not 45 minutes from here.

And people didn't know of the atrocities going on in their backyard down the road from them. The completely different worldview that people were having. And that's also where that indifference comes in is maybe you didn't ask, but maybe you should have. What role do we as citizens have to understand and stay informed? There's this desire, get away from the news, it's all negative. But there's this relationship we have with where we live, where there is a responsibility for us to stay involved, informed, and understand the issues that are rising. Could you talk about that passage and what it means to you?

It's, yeah, I think Angie showed me where she had, the first time I met her, was this first day opening ceremony for a memorial walk on the highway of tears that, Her and Brenda Wilson were, had put together in 2016. So I had driven down to Prince Rupert, which is on the one end of the Highway of Tears. And to meet with them and, you know, introduced myself to her. And we're sort of chatting about, I was saying, I'm just starting work on a book about this. And, yeah, quite rapidly, she had a note. book and that passage was written on the opening cover of it to remind, always remind herself,

she said. And, you know, I think very shortly afterward, I started having notebooks written on the cover for the same reason, especially as a journalist. You know, journalism plays this really important role in telling people what's happening. but then as you you know have alluded to there needs to also be people you know the consumers of that journalism who listen and do something about it

so you know some of the atrocities that were going on in residential schools I mean they were documented and publicly in some cases you know, well over a hundred years ago, there were reports put together by doctors and submitted to the government well over a hundred years ago.

There was newspaper stories, you know, I don't know if it was the mission school specifically, but, you know, there was newspaper stories about conditions in those schools. So it wasn't, as you say, it wasn't this total secret. But if people don't, you know, seek out that knowledge and then when they have it act on it

or help become part of the critical mass that creates political will to do something, you know, then they're just, they are accepting it. And I do understand how that happens and why that happens in many cases. And I think we always need to be pushing ourselves beyond complacency, you know, and demanding the very best of ourselves and our society. And that takes work and it takes effort.

But, you know, we're lucky to have a society where we can have an impact like that. And I think it, you know, we're beholden to do what we can. There's a dichotomy you layout as well. in the book, which is there's an initial reaction when you find out that there's a missing person. One, I have sympathy for because I actually have a circumstance in my own life that reflects it, which is when somebody is missing, maybe they're just over to friend's house. And that's actually what happened. I was supposed to go to this hockey game and it was kind of cancelled and then my buddy runs up to me and I'm like eight years old and my mom says,

or sorry, not my mom, their parents says, come with us, you come to the hockey game and I go, Oh, okay. Hop in the vehicle. We head to the hockey game. My mom shows up to pick me up. I'm not there. She's wondering what's gone wrong. Teachers don't know what happened. She calls the police. She's sitting there petrified. I show up. Everything was fine. I was just over at the hockey game. No big issue. So that's kind of like the one thing that people think of maybe nothing's wrong. But then there's this other really critical point, which is the first 24 to 48 hours of finding someone are absolutely essential. How do you think about this dichotomy knowing that it? it exists, knowing that it exists with the RCMP. How do you process this? What is a best practice based on your understanding? Best practice would be to treat every case of somebody missing as though it is the worst possible scenario. And then in more than 90% of cases, that won't be what comes to be, thankfully.

I mean, I can't remember the exact number, but the, you know, I think it's our CMP reports, not, it's not every police force in Canada, but, you know, it's something upwards of 90% of missing cases, missing person cases, are resolved within 24 to 48 hours. And they, you know, the vast majority are situations like, like you say. but if you don't respond because you're hoping that's what it is and then that's not what it is you've lost really valuable time I mean I think in many of the Highway of Tears cases it was an issue too of

the police not believing families that it was an issue so when a family said you know a mom went to the RCNPia and said my daughter hasn't been home, you know, since she went out last night or two nights ago with friends. And they would say, well, you know, it's Sunday. She's probably partying it up. She's on some bender. Give it a few days kind of thing. And when families said, no, she doesn't do that. She's never done that. This is very uncharacteristic. Or, you know, we heard this, which raises our

level of concern that was not taken seriously um like police just didn't believe them and so i think that's another um really important factor you know if you don't have the resources to respond with everything you got for every single case and so there's some prioritizing is to that police accept families and, you know, the words of people who know the missing person to be accurate, you know, and if it, like, I'm just thinking of, you know, I also heard of police saying, well, sometimes it's the same person, you know, it is the same 13-year-old or 15-year-old kid, they go missing, you know. multiple times, and they've always just hitchhiked here, they've always gone and done this.

Do we just keep responding, you know, as though it's an absolute crisis? And, I mean, I would say yes. And we have a precedence for this. Firefighters. Firefighters go to go to the place no matter what and assume that it could be a worst case scenario. So we do know that this is possible. This isn't beyond the realm of possibility. No. And I mean, if it means that there needs to be more resources put into missing persons units in police forces, so be it. And we, I mean, as members of the public, we can decide that. And we can push politicians to do that. Or maybe there's a different answer, and it's not a unit within a police force to respond to missing person reports. We can do that too.

You highlighted something else, and it's on this exact note, of trusting parents, trusting the family, and you have a great quote by this individual, Michael, and he says that 90% of crime is solved through citizen involvement. I feel like we need to put that up on signs. We need to get people to start to think about that. Because me, with a criminology background, four years of an education, I had no idea about that statistic. and so often we look at the victims, like, you're overwhelmed, you don't know what's going on, this is all a lot to take in, but we treat the police officers. Like you've been around the block, you know how this goes.

And when they have these false presuppositions, which is they'll turn up in 24 to 48 hours, don't worry about it. They're not following the research. They're not following the evidence. And then when they're ignoring the victim, they're literally avoiding informants who are going to help them solve the matter. I love his quote because he says, they're not the CIA, they're a publicly funded, public-facing, public service. And I think they need to be reminded of that, and we need to hold them accountable to that standards. Yeah. I mean, they are here. They have their jobs. They exist because we pay for that.

And I think that's often forgotten. And there's such a sort of power imbalance there in many cases. yeah i think we we need to we can demand more uh and and that does in sometimes it seems small and slow but it does change things i mean that just you you remind me of when you're saying you know we're talking about the level of police response not believing families and i mean if you look at i mean think of many girls and women who went missing on the highway of tears the the level of response. You know, and it's hard to find out exactly what it is. Like the RCNP won't say, here's all our records, here's what we did.

So you have to, as a journalist, I mean, it's sort of piecing it together by talking to as many investigators as you can, by talking to a lot of families kept notes of all of this. But you look at that, and this was really highlighted, I think, as well in the inquiry into the police response. when all the women were going missing from Vancouver. Like, there was just such a low response. And then you compare that to a different or perceived to be different kind of a victim.

You know, and it is like five alarm, like the firefighters rushing down the street for some people, but then not for other people. And that is a huge problem. One piece that even stood out for me as like a learning opportunity. There's something about us as humans that we start getting on this train and we start thinking we understand an issue. And one of the things I thought I understood about the missing and murdered indigenous women's inquiry was they were hitchhiking. And this was just something that you hear and something that you kind of get in your head and you parroted it because somebody else parroted it to you or you heard about this case.

case, when you pointed out that it's three out of ten of the victims were confirmed as hitchhiking, that's not a majority. I can't paint this brush over everybody as if they were all taking this certain kind of risk that you don't want to take. There was a presupposition there, and this just shows the importance of really trying to make sure you're informed and not basing it off of something you heard somebody else say at one point in time. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly what I had always heard was hitchhiking and growing up and that was like

the don't hitchhike because you'll get killed like these other people and it was only when you know kind of going through each case each case and going she wasn't hitchhiking she was with her sister

you know she wasn't hitchhiking she was less seen at a gas station and then like then going and counting them and going like, what? And, you know, the problem with boiling it down to it's all hitchhiking is that then the solutions are not going to solve any of it. And there is this sort of intrinsic victim blaming built into that.

Well, don't hitchhike and then nothing bad will happen. You know, and like part of, I think, the hitchhiking conversation and the victim blaming that often ends up being part of it, And it's very, very important to stress that in that part of the world, it's not a choice. Like, it's not like you decide to be a reckless person and go hitchhike. It's the only way to go anywhere. You know, I picked up a woman. It was actually the last interview I did for the Highway of Tears book.

So this would have been probably the winter of 2019, maybe February, something like that. Really, really cold, dark, snowing sideways. I was driving out of Prince George on my way back to Smithers about four hours away and I saw this tiny figure hitchhiking on the side of the highway and I stopped. And it was a woman in her 70s from Tache of First Nation, like quite a ways north off the highway.

But she was trying to get home that night. She had to get home that night. And she had been, she'd taken a health bus that connects people who need health care from some of these more rural communities to largely Prince George, where there's, like, for that entire region, that's pretty much the only place where you get specialists and that sort of thing. So she'd taken the health bus to go to the specialist appointment. The appointment was late, and so she'd missed the bus home.

And so she's left hitchhiking. So this isn't like something that you do because you're young and reckless. This is a way, the only way for many people to get her. around. Cickex was not something I was expecting when I picked it up the book. What are your feelings on psychics? I ran into some and was contacted by lots. Yeah, where I felt that everything they said was easily accessible on the public record.

and that for them to charge money to tell, you know, grieving and grieving people who really, really need answers to charge the money to tell them that stuff is really unsettling. Really, really unsettling. I met people who had worked with certain sites. and people who were investigators, you know, pretty objective, who, you know, still work with them because some of them, there's something there that is helpful, you know, so all the power to them. And for, I mean, I think lots of families at various times have consulted them. And if that's, you know, helpful for whatever reason, that's great.

I do think that psychics who are getting their information from publicly available sources should really, really not be charging money to any, any families, members of victims of any crime. I was one of the darkest parts of the book is considering that somebody would see someone grieving, someone stressed over losing a loved one, someone worrying, and taking advantage of them at perhaps their weakest point. Yeah. Yeah, and that that happens. Definitely that happens. It's remarkable and just horrible to realize. Could you also tell me about one thing that really stood out to me was the important.

of fundraising. I hadn't really ever thought about how important that $10,000 reward was when you see it on a street sign or that $25,000 reward, how much that can actually play a difference. I often felt sorrow for the family that they were having to go to those lengths to get information. But when you pointed out and showed how much of an impact that can have that that can really wake people up to taking action, there was a bit of sorrow there that there needs to be a cash value in order for someone to come forward, but also that this is a tool

that vulnerable indigenous people may not be able to fully utilize and you talk about the fundraising process and all the barriers that they were hitting and then other people were having an easy time of getting news coverage and responses and so they're able to bring that in. What are your thoughts on the fundraising process?

There's got to be a better system than this, right? Definitely. Yeah, I mean, I think there's fundraising that is done has to be done for a number of purposes when your loved one goes missing or is murdered. I mean, unless you have a great deal of resources at your disposal

which most people don't. Even just something, you know, like transportation to if your loved one goes missing in a city four hours from where you live, how do you get there? Because you want to be there, meeting with investigators, searching, doing all of those things. Where do you stay?

How do you pay for a hotel for a month? It's really expensive and all of those costs. And then how do you put together a reward that's enough of a reward that it might bring information that you wouldn't otherwise get? And I mean, I was so heartbroken to learn, you know, and I attended to. some of these events for for some people missing in the northwest bc where you know the mom and dad and aunts and uncles of a young person who's missing are doing a car wash to raise money to go and search for him uh and to get search searching equipment like an underwater camera you know things like that and i like you i just thought there there has to be a better way i mean no grieving mom should

have to be washing somebody's work truck to get ten bucks to go towards finding uh finding her son or or her daughter this is ridiculous um you know how what that looks like i don't know i mean one of the ideas that i've discussed with lots of the families and would love if we could sort of get it off the ground uh at some point or if somebody could get it off the ground would be you know a fund that is available is available for costs associated with a loved one going missing on the highway of chairs and where you know it's not a really onerous process um most the amounts that would be really helpful or not huge amounts uh you know 500 bucks to cover gas is sort of what people will need or you know romona wilson who i mentioned who was murdered and found in 1995

five in Smithers. Her family does the memorial walk every year for her and for all of the girls and women. And, you know, just like funds for water and, you know, and snacks for the people who attend. So small amounts can make a really huge difference. And if there was sort of one place where that's there, that's accessible to support families and quickly, because when your loved ones missing, you can't wait a month for, you know, some kind of support. I think that would be wonderful. I mean, if it was on the highway of tears or if it could be on a bigger basis, I would love, I think it would be really, really fabulous if that could be done. How do you do that, I'm not sure. I think it's a challenge. GoFundMe seems like the place

everybody's going right now. But as you said, the statistics on what people actually end up getting from GoFundMe and the ones that kind of make the news and what people hear about are so vastly different. I've seen reports on the kind of the differences. The other piece that I think is really worth covering is the RCMP in all of this because there were a lot of complexities. I felt you did a great job of kind of laying everything out. One of them was one of the people in the book, Ray points out that they were sending some of the biggest, toughest RCP officers to this region because of the weird crimes that were going on, the perceived nature of what was going on in the region. And so you're not getting the empathetic, understanding, patient, thoughtful,

well-educated officer in this region. So already we're pulling from people who are more ready to just kind of go and get involved and take things on. But then other people in the book talked about that both sides were hesitant to come to the table together. It wasn't just the RCMP that individuals who are indigenous sometimes go, they're not going to understand. They're not going to listen. And so you're already putting that kind of hesitation up of, I'm not going to go all in on this because I think they are a certain way. And so she talked about both sides coming together and trying to mend. I'm interested in what your perspective on this. How do we bring the two back together? Because one side is saying you're racist and the other saying,

no, we're not. Don't worry about it. Everything's fine. This isn't working. How do we bring these two groups together? So there's trust and the feeling that when you call, you're actually going to get an answer and that people are going to support you. How do we rebuild this connection from your perspective? I think that the first step would be that the RCP or whatever police force was responsible for these investigations would need to be actually be that police force that you can call, you can trust, you can rely on. That would be the first step. And, you know, right now frankly it's not

and so families or people in communities wouldn't necessarily share all the information with police but that's you know for very good reason and until the police forces are

are that ideal you know that would be the first step and then once that actually is the reality within police forces then I think a whole lot of relationship repair would need to happen. But, you know, it's so, like, the R.CMP, and especially the RCP, has such a long and atrocious history of its actions, you know,

with indigenous communities the colonial effort to begin with and with residential schools and the child welfare system and then you know the behavior of individual officers the culture within police forces I mean how

or if you can turn that around I don't know I know that, I mean, I've met in the course of working on that book and in the course of working on other things, I've met our CMP officers who really, really cared about, you know, these girls and women, about their families, really cared about solving things. And it was really frustrating to them that they couldn't get the information that they needed to do that.

But I would say, you know, in most of those conversations, conversations I've had with RCMP officers or retired officers, their frustration is at their colleagues in organization that has created this relationship of mistrust. It's certainly not at individuals or families who didn't trust them. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's the police force that needs to do a lot of work to change before. Or, you know, you could even really start looking at improving that relationship. Right. The other really important piece of the book is I think you prove out really clearly that one person can make a difference.

And that's really important to me. When you look at Fred, when you look at Rhonda, when you look at their willingness to dive into a circumstance, get involved, and start to try and have a positive impact. It's clear that these problems, as you've kind of described, aren't insurmountable. It's not impossible that we could see some progress on these issues. Can you talk about where this comes from and what stood out to you about Fred and Rhonda? I mean, I think Fred and Rhonda and many of the people I met who were not as directly affected by this as families. and certainly, certainly families, just how hard they would work and how much they would care, and they would make a difference.

Yeah, I mean, Rhonda spent decades working on these sorts of cases, you know, and put all of her life, all of her money, everything into doing this kind of work. And, you know, not to diminish the work of those people, but, I mean, families have done that and so much more well having to bear the loss of, you know, their daughter or their mom or their sister. And they've still done all this work to raise awareness and to push the powerful to change the situation and to support others. going through similar situations. I mean, ultimately, there's so many sad and horrific things in that book. But overall, to me, the feeling of that, of doing that work in that book and the biggest sort of lessons I was left with as a person was how incredibly good

and strong and brave people are. One of the pieces that stood out to me was that the actors that you think of when you think police officer, victim, judge, this is murky, that just because you're given the title of an RCMP officer doesn't make you the hero, just because you're given the title of a judge doesn't mean you're automatically a good person. and the perfect illustration of this was Judge Ramsey. Would you mind sharing that and how that kind of came about in the book? Because it just completely changes your assumptions about who the actors are and how to think about these issues. Yeah, Judge Ramsey, David Ramsey, was a fellow who moved to the Prince George area in 1991, I believe. He was appointed to the bench as a provincial court judge,

and he did that job for about a decade. He was very well thought of in Prince George Society. He sat on the board of a transitional house for at-risk youth, for another for women fleeing domestic violence, you know from the surface he looked like a very respectable member of society but you know not not very

hidden it was going on in plain sight and if you probably asked just about any kid who found themselves spending a lot of their time on the downtown Prince George streets knew he was picking up kids off the street driving them out of town, paying them for sex

and in many instances not paying them, beating them, sexually assaulting them. And yeah, in the course of investigating allegations about that, and that had been going on for many years. And when I say in plain sight, I mean, there were social workers who later said that they had reported to the police that they kept seeing a girl that they knew

to be homeless and sexually exploited getting into the judge's car in downtown Prince George and Broad Daylight kind of thing. Really, it was in plain view. But in the course of the investigation into that, there were allegations also raised against

nine police officers, RCP officers. And those were never looked at I mean, as it's been explained by one high-level RC&P member at the time, he said that because it just seemed so impossible that up to nine police officers in a small detachment in a small city would be doing stuff like that and nobody would know they didn't investigate it until when the judge was finally charged, he was due in court the same court that he had presided over for years and he was showing up as a defendant and he pled guilty which was not expected but when that happened it you know perhaps added some veracity to

what some of the youth had told investigators about RC&P officers and so it was only then that the RCMP started investigating its own officers. And Judge Ramsey, after pleading guilty and being convicted of five of the ten charges, I mean, and one of them was like sexual assault causing bodily harm, breach of trust, because the victim in that sexual assault was somebody whose life he had presided over from the bench. he was sentenced to seven years in prison and it's worth noting too that the seven years was actually more

than the prosecution asked for I think the defense asked for two and the prosecution asked for five and it was actually the judge presiding over that that added to the sentence but I mean yeah that was seven years for abusing four girls. What more would you like to see done?

The book has been out for some time. Marion Buller's report has been out for some time. She paints a pretty bleak picture of the implementation that we had an inquiry, but very little has been done to make sure that resources are available, supports are available, programs are available. A plan is in place to address. some of the challenges that people face, what more would you like to see done

that you think is feasible? Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff that would really help is very basic. So, I mean, in many years before the National Inquiry, in 2006, there was a symposium in Prince George for measures to make the Highway of Tears safer. And that report had just over 30 recommendations that were put together by service providers, so, you know, social workers, teachers, family members of the victims, the RCMP politicians, everybody agreed on these recommendations. And they were, you know, things like self-service along the highway, transportation along the highway, pretty basic doable stuff.

And, yeah, most of those, it's almost 20 years later, and most of those are still not in place. But, I mean, I think just even if people could just see progress, that would be good. And there is a little bit of progress, but I think as Marion, you know, pointed out the state of getting those recommendations from the National Inquiry Report, is, I mean, I think it's over half of them aren't even started yet four years later. But yeah, I think, I mean, those very basic measures would be a really good start. And, but then I think also, I mean,

there does need to be just such a revout of many of the systems that we have in place and of the attitudes we have in place. And, I mean, that's where everybody can really make a difference, is to educate themselves, to educate their friends. I mean, when I think of how do attitudes change, which, you know, how does society change? So much of that change comes from its education

and its personal connections. And that's, you know, if everybody took that on, and worked on that, things would change fairly quickly. And things like implementing the recommendations from the National Inquiry Report could happen pretty quickly if the political will was there. And the way to get the political will there is for the public will to be there. I mean, we've seen big change when the public really got in an uproar about this issue. you know and it was it was i think the story largely it was the story of tina fontaine

they're really galvanized Canadians across the spectrum that there was a huge problem that must be addressed and then rewind to 2015 one of the key parts of the liberal platform when they were running for for office um was a missing and murdered indigenous women and girls inquiry you You know, something families have been calling for at that point for 20, 30 years. But they were elected with the majority, and they called that inquiry, and they did be inquiry. And I think to me that, I mean, that gives me hope in the sense that if the public will push for something in enough numbers, we can make it happen. And we have all this information. We know this stuff.

And if we prioritize it ourselves, our government will prioritize it. The Highway of Tears is available everywhere. I am so grateful to have been able to discuss this book. I think it's so important, and I thought you did an eloquent job of taking us through the journey, sharing people's stories, highlighting what they've been through, and I can't imagine the work that went into it. Would you mind telling people how they can follow along with your journey? I think you have a few projects coming soon.

Would you mind telling them how they can keep up to date? Yeah, I don't know about coming soon. I'm working on another book. Actually, it sort of comes from the work on Highway of Tears, looking into the Judge Ramsey that you asked about, looking into that whole situation and allegations that arose and were never sort of dealt with, perhaps. Yeah, so I'm working on another book.

That's going to be a while before that's out. In the meantime, yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I have a website, which has my email address on it. People can contact me anytime. I'm always happy to hear from people. Jessica, I can't thank you enough. Investigative journalism is something that I care a lot about.

I know it's a challenging field. I know that it's not a growing field at this point in time. So for you to put it in all of this work, I think is so important and appreciated for individuals like myself who had preconceived notions about what was going on, had a few things in my head that I thought I knew what it was about, and you really helped clear some understanding, make sure that I understood the depths of it, gave both perspectives throughout, and made sure that all the voices were heard. And I just can't thank you enough for all your work on this. Thank you so much, Erin. I really appreciate that.