Even women were good hunters when they had to be: centuries ago in Canada, before buildings were put up, before the porcelain faces of the Hudson’s Bay Company workers emerged from large ships.

They waited for an animal to scurry by, and swiftly, with a flick of a wrist, a weapon unleashed, the creature lay listless.

When they killed an animal, they respectfully used its entire carcass, even sometimes saying a prayer over it. No such ritual is performed now.

Fast forward to the present and times have changed – the hunters are now the hunted.

Their mangled bodies are found face-down in fields, farms, and garbage bins. Genitals often mutilated, limbs sometimes severed. The symphony of their screams should burn holes through our ears, but they are merely a whisper to the Canadian government and police.

There are so many, those voices of the dead: they are the missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. Earlier this month, at a vigil and rally in Centretown, their voices were heard.

The event was to honour the lives of these lost women. Across the country thousands gathered to publicly highlight the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls.

And highlight they should, because this issue is nothing short of a national scandal and not enough is being done to stop it.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has documented 520 cases of missing and murdered women over the last 30 years. Many of these deaths remain unsolved. Likely, far too many.

The reason this particular group is vulnerable is simple.

According to Statistics Canada, almost 43 per cent of Aboriginal women live in poverty. It’s no surprise that when someone is desperate for money, they turn to a dangerous lifestyle to get by. Some occupations involve more risk to personal safety than others, and working in the sex trade, which some of these women do, is particularly high risk.

But it is the government which played a large role in putting them in such a vulnerable position in the first place.

The government ripped them from their families and stuck them in abusive residential school systems that robbed them of their culture, identity and authenticity as humans. Aborignal people are still struggling with the after-affects of that system, the last school only closing in 1997.

In 2004, Amnesty International released a Human Rights Report responding to Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada. That report concludes: “In every instance, Canadian authorities could and should have done more to ensure the safety of these women and girls.”

It is essential that the Canadian government make investigating and solving the cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada a priority and generous funding should be provided to do so.

Without this, their voices will be silenced forever.

The loudest quiet on Earth.