Rinelle Harper

Rinelle Harper (born 1998) is a Canadian woman from the Garden Hill First Nation in Manitoba. In November 2014, after narrowly surviving a violent assault at the age of 16, Harper rose to prominence in national media as an advocate for victims of violence. She publicly called for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada, addressing the Assembly of First Nations and speaking at the first Canadian conference on missing and murdered indigenous women.

Early life

Rinelle Harper is a member of the Garden Hill First Nation in Manitoba. Harper's parents are Julie and Caesar Harper, and her uncle was Elijah Harper, a provincial politician who became noted for his refusal to accept the constitutional changes of the 1990 Meech Lake Accord.

As a teenager, Harper attended Southeast Collegiate, an indigenous Winnipeg high school owned and maintained by several First Nations communities. She is fluent in both English and Oji-Cree. Around midnight, Harper became separated from her friends and was approached by two young men. The men beat and sexually assaulted Harper underneath a bridge before leaving her submerged in the near-freezing Assiniboine River. Harper initially had no pulse upon reaching the hospital

Investigation and charges Although it is common for sexual assault victims to remain unidentified by Canadian police and media, Harper's parents and the investigating authorities made the unusual decision to release Rinelle Harper's name to the public, with the objective of helping find new leads in the case quickly. A subsequent police press conference stated that public response to the release of Harper's name had been "tremendous".

Investigators examined the possibility that Harper's assault was related to the disappearance and murder of First Nations teenager Tina Fontaine, whose body had been discovered in a river only weeks before, but found no information suggesting the two crimes were linked.

Aftermath On November 20, 2014, Harper and her family met with Sean Vincent, one of the construction workers who had found Harper and helped get her to the hospital. The family expressed their thanks by giving Vincent a soapstone bear sculpture and a painting from the Garden Hill First Nation.

Calls for national inquiry The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have reported that indigenous women are disproportionately represented in cases of missing and murdered women in Canada.

Over subsequent months, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded to calls for an inquiry by dismissing concerns, stating that cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, while tragic, "need not be further studied".

In November 2015, Rinelle Harper spoke at the Spirit of Our Sisters gala in Alberta. The gala was part of the first national Canadian conference on missing and murdered indigenous women.

In spite of shyness, Harper has stated that she wants to be "a voice for the voiceless". That same year, she began collaboration on a book with Canadian author Maggie de Vries

Harper has expressed a desire to become a phys-ed teacher or a doctor.