Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada: a new population affinity assessment technique to aid in identification using 3D technology

As of 2015, 204 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) remained unsolved in Canada, making it a major concern for Canadian Indigenous communities, who are still pressing for the resolution of these cases. In forensic anthropology, the assessment of population affinity can be useful to help identify victims. Population affinity, previously referred to as ancestry, is evaluated based on morphological analyses, which examine the size and shape of skeletal features, and metric analyses, which utilise skeletal measurements. However, morphological analyses strongly depend on an anthropologist’s experience with human variation, which makes the analyses particularly challenging to reproduce and standardise. The purpose of this study is to improve the rigour of morphological analyses by using 3D technology to quantify relevant cranial nonmetric population affinity traits. As there is currently little morphological data available for the Canadian Indigenous population, this research aims to develop a new technique that could aid in the identification of MMIWG. The study comprised a total of 87 adult female crania, including 24 of Canadian Inuit origin, 50 of European descent and 13 of African descent. The samples were imaged using photogrammetry, then analysed using a 3D shape analysis in 3DS Max. Results show that this method is satisfactory in correctly evaluating population affinity with an accuracy of 87.36% (jackknifed: 80.46%) and an average repeatability of 97%. Unfortunately, the small Canadian Indigenous sample size impacted the applicability of the results and further research will be required before the technique can be used to aid in the identification of MMIWG in Canada.