The US is extraditing Canadian writer Dawn Walker for faking her death and kidnapping her son. Here’s your latest update on the incident.
Canadian writer Dawn Walker to be extradited from the US
Dawn Walker, a Canadian writer will be extradited from the US for faking her death and kidnapping her seven-year-old son. The writer is also accused of stealing her friend’s identity for crossing Canada’s border. However, she stated she fled to escape from domestic violence. The Indigenous author from Okanese Cree Nation in the Saskatchewan province went missing over a month ago.
Prompting fears that she and her son had drowned in the South Saskatchewan River, her abandoned pickup truck was spotted in a park in the city of Saskatoon.
A GoFundMe campaign was also set up to help locate the writer’s son. It raised almost $39,000. As per the US Department of Homeland Security officials, Walker was arrested in Oregon. Walker’s arrest is on the basis of stealing her friend’s identity to cross the US border, in addition to an “abduction scheme” to bring her son to the country.
More on the incident
“I feared for my safety and that of my son,” said Dawn Walker upon her arrest. She added that she was “failed by the Saskatchewan justice system, the family law system, and child protection”. She was involved in a long legal battle for the custody of her son.
Walker is a critic of the failure of addressing the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women. She was shortlisted for the Canadian literary award for her book- The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour. She is also the former CEO of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN). “It is heartbreaking that Dawn may have felt she had no other choice but to take the drastic action that she did,” stated Booby Cameron. Bobby is the current chief of FSIN.