This report examines the role of discrimination in acts of violence carried out against Indigenous women in Canadian towns and cities. Discrimination takes the form both of overt cultural prejudice and of implicit or systemic biases in the policies and actions of government officials and agencies, or of society as a whole. Discrimination has played out in policies and practices that have helped put Indigenous women in harm’s way and in the failure to provide Indigenous women the protection from violence that is every woman’s human right.