Daughter of First Nations woman missing 20 years remembers her mother's 'warm hands'

CBC

3 days ago

Stephanie Cameron-Johnson was 11 and in foster care when she learned her mother had gone missing on Vancouver Island, after a friend showed her a photo in a newspaper.
What followed would be two decades of challenging racial stereotypes surrounding her mom, undoing shame, and repairing identity disconnection caused by the child welfare system, Cameron-Johnson says.
"The narrative that's been spoken about missing, murdered Indigenous women and two-spirit folks… I really feel like it's my responsibility to change that," said Cameron-Johnson.
Her mother Belinda Cameron, a Sixties Scoop survivor from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, was 42 when she was last seen at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Esquimalt, B.C., on Esquimalt Rd near Head St., on May 11, 2005.
She suffered from a mental illness and was prescribed medication, to be picked up at Shoppers daily, but failed to attend the pharmacy in the days following. She wasn't reported missing until June 4.
Police consider disappearance suspicious
Det. Colin Hanninen of the Victoria Police Department said Cameron was a person of routine and a fixture in Esquimalt in 2005.
She was considered a vulnerable person by police due to addiction and mental health issues, said Hanninen, and her disappearance is considered suspicious.
Cameron was initially reported missing by a man who she'd been involved with, but the man told Victoria Police he had not seen her in over a month. Police used a polygraph test to question if the man had harmed Cameron; he denied doing so and passed the test.
"At the time there was a robust investigation involving this person, and a polygraph was part of that," said Hanninen.
Investigators conducted over 100 interviews and an extensive forensic examination of Cameron's Cairn Road apartment near Old Esquimalt Road, said Hanninen, as well as canine and helicopter searches.
"Unfortunately, you know, it had been potentially three to four weeks from the time we can confirm she was last seen to her being reported, which puts you at a disadvantage," said Hanninen.
"In 2005, it would have been a lot more challenging than it would be today to find clues of where she could have gone or, you know, if she was with anybody."
A 2010 report from the Native Women's Association of Canada said British Columbia had the highest number of cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in the country, according to its database.
B.C. also had the highest percentage of suspicious death cases: nine per cent of the cases in its database from B.C. fell under the category of suspicious deaths, compared to four per cent nationally, the report said.
'Ripple effect'
Cameron-Johnson said police and media reports her mother used drugs or may be doing sex work don't fit with the way she remembers her mother.
"It's a stereotype… that's not all who she was," said Cameron-Johnson.
"I remember speaking to some social workers, and they said that she was just always so sweet and kind but that could also kind of get taken advantage of."
Cameron-Johnson and her younger sister Zoe were living in foster care at the time of their mother's disappearance.
Social workers told the sisters their mother voluntarily put them into care, said Cameron-Johnson, but she remembers being abruptly removed by ministry workers from her Grade 1 classroom in 1999.
'When she went missing, my foster mom told me that it was essentially, like, her fault," Cameron-Johnson said.
"They really did make her look like she was in the wrong."
She and her sister being put in care was the beginning of her mother's downward spiral, Cameron-Johnson said.
"I feel like that really kind of did have that ripple effect on my mom's self worth, and going missing," said Cameron-Johnson.
"I don't think she was surrounded with care and love and support. I feel that someone did, like, harm her in a terrible way, and I think that people knew her... know things."
Kirsten Barnes, director of clinical legal services at the B.C. First Nations Justice Council, said women like Cameron faced less access to legal recourse and understanding around systemic barriers in the '90s and early 2000s than today, with improvements still needed.
"Indigenous women, a lot of them would have felt incredibly alone. They would have felt incredible power imbalance… she probably felt a great deal of pressure," said Barnes.
Federal and provincial sanctioned policies such as residential schools and the Sixties Scoop were "created deliberately to destroy the family unit," said Barnes, and have led to the ongoing overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care, known as the Millennial Scoop.
As of January 2024, 68 per cent of the 4,835 children and youth in care in B.C. were Indigenous, according to the province.
"In this case with Belinda, had she had those [family] connections her whole entire life, things may have been different, right? She may have had all of the support that she would have needed," Barnes said.
"No parent wants to ever voluntarily give their children up… and that may not have happened if she had not been taken as a child herself. It wasn't really voluntary if you think about the circumstances that she was probably dealing with at the time."
Cameron-Johnson said she and her sister are still looking for answers on what happened to their mother, and can feel their mom guiding them.
Belinda Cameron was a mother, a homemaker, a baker, enjoyed beading group nights at the Victoria Friendship Centre, and was a skilled thrifter with incredible style, said Cameron-Johnson.
"I just remember her warm hands. She just had a really lovely, warm presence," Cameron-Johnson said.
"She was there. She was present. I can't really ask more for that, as a parent, to have in your life."
Belinda Cameron is described as a five feet, eight inches tall with a medium to large build, long, dark brown hair at the time of her disappearance, and dark brown eyes. She is also known as Belinda Ann Engen.