Christine Welsh's documentary Finding Dawn described the violence and discrimination experienced by Aboriginal women and girls in Canada as a national tragedy. The national tragedy is illustrated by the murders and careless disappearances of approximately 500 Aboriginal women in Canada over the past 30 years (Finding Dawn, 2006). While watching this documentary it became apparent that the embedded historical, social and economic factors contributed negatively to this national tragedy receiving little attention in Canada. Therefore, the issues presented in Finding Dawn are actually a representation of larger social problems related to issues of oppression, ethnocentrism, racism, and assimilation in our society. Finding Dawn gave viewers a deeper insight into the experience of Aboriginal women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. to the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia, where twelve women (all but one Aboriginal) went missing, to Professor Shannon Acoose's unique life experiences in Saskatchewan (Finding Dawn, 2006). This documentary was described by the Canadian Council for the Arts as “highlighting the disturbing global culture of impunity that allows murders of women – especially poor, indigenous or sex workers – to go unsolved and unpunished (Cinema Politics , 2006 ).” The theoretical perspective in analyzing the social problems underlying missing women in Canada can be through understanding conflict theory. Conflict theory derives from the works of Karl Marx, who focuses on the primary themes of power, oppression and exclusion (Unit 1, Justice Studies). An example of this is the harmful treatment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada after centuries of colonialism and ... middle of paper ... instrument of the Canadian federal government to extinguish Indian land rights (Stout and Kipling, 2003:38). Furthermore, Aboriginal people still continue to suffer the intergenerational consequences of these historical wrongs, such as residential schools, the 1960s scoop, all the more evident in Finding Dawn. These intergenerational consequences have made the issue of missing women the sad reality of being an Aboriginal woman in Canada. Doug Cuthand, a writer, stated that “Indian women can be beaten and killed with very little public outcry. Somehow they are not important (Entremont, 2004).” Democratic racism has resulted in extreme racism, loss of indigenous language, poverty, family violence, loss of parenting skills, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, high rates of incarnation and much more, as described by commentators in the documentary Finding Dawn..