Teenage girl runs 115K for missing and murdered Canadian indigenous women

A Manitoba teenager, Tracie Léost, is using running to draw attention to a prominent Canadian social issue. The 16-year-old ran 115 kilometres to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.

Starting in the Lake Manitoba region last Wednesday, Léost ran the distance all the way to downtown Winnipeg on Saturday, reports the CBC.

She says this is an extremely important issue to her and it needs to be addressed.

By completing the run, Léost is not only raising awareness for the missing indigenous women (which includes Inuit and Metis groups as well as First Nations), she’s also raising funds for Families First Foundation, a not-for-profit designed to support the families of the missing and murdered.

I MADE IT!! 115 complete but the journey still isn’t over???? pic.twitter.com/zEKwEWFK8s

— trace (@tracieleost) August 22, 2015

Léost is Metis herself which brings her all the more close to the issue. “It scares you thinking ‘that could be me’ and I know I have so much more to achieve and I have so much life to live,” said Léost in an interview with the CBC. “So do those girls and that just gets stripped away from them.”

The young runner’s parents, friends and other family members accompanied her on the run, driving alongside and providing her with her needs throughout the trip.

Amnesty International reports there have been 1,017 missing indigenous women and girls from 1980 to 2012. Many of these cases have gone unsolved. This rate is seven times higher than the homicide rate of other women in Canada.

Last year, the RCMP released Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview. It includes data from all police jurisdictions across Canada in the 33-year period.

This is the first initiative of its kind, reads the report.

For more on the missing and murdered women, the CBC has done in-depth investigations on unsolved cases. Find them here.