Missing Women

There is a huge number of missing women in Canada, and an extremely large number of these women are Aboriginal. Why do Aboriginal women seem more vulnerable? The majority of these missing Aboriginal women were living on the streets, living in poverty and working in the sex trade industry before their disappearances. Why were all of these women in the same situation? I believe that the Conflict Theory explains the hardships, the abuse and the discrimination that each of these women faced before they went missing. The Conflict Theory states that society is marked by power struggles over scarce resources; inequities result in conflict; social change is inevitable. Since the theft of Aboriginal land and destruction of traditional ways of life, many First Nations people live in extreme poverty that has lasted for generations. This removal of First Nations people from their land caused great hardships and a breakdown in their traditional systems causing a great deal of dysfunction within their own communities. These dysfunctions lead to physical abuse and substances abuse. The Conflict Theory also states that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by society and its economic structure. For the Aboriginal people economic factors served as the initial catalyst for change within Aboriginal societies. Aboriginal people were first directed away from hunting into the economic order of the fur trade society. Gradually, more and more of them became removed from the land and went into settlements with a welfare economy. These changes to Aboriginal lifestyle distorted their traditional way of life. Again causing more hardships and poverty. Inequality; the dominance of groups of people over other groups of people; oppression and exploitation, it is probably the biggest obstacle that Aboriginal people faced after the introduction of residential schools for Aboriginal children. Children were removed from their families and homes at a young age, some to return eight