Canada

I read this report. I'm left feeling sad, both about the colonialism that's led to the marginalization of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the ongoing failure to address effects of this, like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).

Indigenous people make up 5% of Canada's total population and 8% of its child population, yet 51% and 55% of women and girls trapped in sex trafficking in Canada are Indigenous, and 54% of the foster care system is Indigenous children.

Canada STILL does not have a national database for Indigenous disappearances.

The report presents interesting geospatial analyses that, combined with insights from survivors and insiders, create good leads for enhanced protection and policing efforts. For a very privacy-oriented person like myself, I thought a fairly compelling argument for using facial recognition technology was made: that when an Indigenous woman is reported missing (especially with details that match typical poaching and abduction schemes), sex ads across Canada and the US should be scanned for matches to try and locate the missing/abducted person.

I think I might see a new journalism paradigm in my lifetime. I'm finding that an increasing proportion of the most important and critical Canadian news stories I'm reading are published in outlets outside of Canada. I'm reminded of a few George Orwell quotes:

• Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations
• The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it

Now that mainstream news is almost naked corporate establishment PR, science is being defunded in the US, and fascism and extreme weather are becoming more unignorable - maybe a investigative coalition between researchers, programmers, and journalists will arise that can find a way to do good work and get fairly compensated for it.