UNBC Professor Sarah de Leeuw – photo submitted

Prince George, B.C. – A UNBC professor and author has drawn inspiration from the Highway of Tears and transformed it into an award winning essay.

Sarah de Leeuw calls “Soft Shouldered” a “personal look at the Highway of Tears – a topic that’s near and dear to my heart.”

She says the connection comes from her experience as a previous women’s centre coordinator to someone who’s grown up in the north and hitchhiked the highway herself.

De Leeuw says that experience informed her work and inspired her to humanize the issue.

“All these woman who are missing and murdered could be us and they most certainly could be our sisters, our mothers, our aunties, our cousins. I think it’s a topic that needs to be engaged from a very heart felt and in my case, artistic way.”

She also sought to “de-normalize” what she says is an acceptance of violence against aboriginal women.

“You know violence against women in the north isn’t normal. We should never except it, we must always be surprised and appalled by it.”

De Leeuw says the Highway of Tears is just one of many issues that Canadians need to grapple with.

“Let’s be clear – 30% of reserves in this country live under a boil water advisory and have done for decades. Rates of infectious diseases, rates of tuberculosis unheard of in non-aboriginal communities continue to sky rocket in Inuit communities.”

De Leeuw’s “Soft Shouldered” won a pair of Western Magazine Awards along with the provincial award for BC/Yukon and took first place in the Human Experience category.

It will also be part of a forthcoming collection (NeWest Press) entitled “Where it Hurts.”