Humanity Erased: Reflecting on Violence against Indigenous Women a Decade after Pickton

It’s been nearly ten years since the Robert Pickton trials. In this largest serial murder case in Canadian history, all the victims were women and a majority of them were Aboriginal. In this episode, we use the case as a springboard to ask: what role should the criminal justice system play in response to violence against Aboriginal women? And where it fails, are other avenues of justice available?

We first interview Professor Elaine Craig (Schulich School of Law) about her recent article in the McGill Law Journal, to hear about the Pickton trials and the limits of the criminal justice system when faced with problems of collective violence. We then speak with Ellen Gabriel, an Indigenous rights advocate, to look at a community’s response to this violence and other ways forward.