Highway of Tears (2014)

• 80%
• 2014
• Documentary
• Matthew Smiley

"Highway of Tears" is about the missing or murdered women along a 724 kilometer stretch of highway in northern British Columbia. None of the 18 cold-cases had been solved since 1969, until project E-Pana (a special division of the RCMP) managed to link DNA to Portland drifter, Bobby Jack Fowler with the 1974 murder of 16 year-old hitchhiker, Collen MacMillen. Why haven't the killers been found? Is this the work of one or several serial killers? In Canada, more than 500 cases of Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered since the 1960s. Half the cases have never been solved. Viewers will discover what the effects of generational poverty, residential schools, systemic violence, and high unemployment rates have done to First Nation reserves and how they tie in with the missing and murdered women in the Highway of Tears cases. Aboriginal women are considered abject victims of violence. Now find out what First Nation leaders are doing to try and swing the pendulum in the other direction.