The killing of one aboriginal woman, or anybody else, is one too many. But according to an RCMP report released earlier this year, the number of murdered aboriginal women in Canada per capita has dropped 41% from 1996 to 2011.

You'd hardly know it, with ongoing calls for a national inquiry and claims the problem is getting worse.

Actually, it's not getting worse. We should never be satisfied with any amount of killing in our communities, regardless of race or gender. But the number of murdered aboriginal women in Canada per capita is falling, not growing. And to characterize it otherwise is dishonest.

In 1996, there were 7.6 aboriginal women per 100,000 who were victims of murder, according to the RCMP's Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview released in May. That number dropped steadily to 4.5 per 100,000 aboriginal women by 2011.

In fact, murders against all women in Canada have gone down during that period, according to the report.

Also, despite claims Canadian police agencies don't take the murder of aboriginal women seriously enough -- another reason behind the drive for a national inquiry -- the facts tell a very different story.

The clearance rate for homicides against aboriginal women is actually very high and almost identical to that of non-aboriginal women. That's because police don't care what the race of the victim is. Homicide detectives want to solve murders regardless of race or gender. And they're very good at it, solving some nine of 10 female homicides between 1980 and 2012, according to the RCMP report.

For aboriginal women murder victims, the clearance rate is 88%, almost identical to the 89% rate for non-aboriginals.

The RCMP report showed aboriginal women face a higher murder rate than non-aboriginal women. However, the Mounties didn't analyze the murder rates of any other individual race.

Are there other races of women in Canada that experience higher rates of murder compared to everyone else? The RCMP didn't look at that.

Why not?

If the objective of studies like these is to examine the relationship between race and victims of homicides, they should include all races in the study, not just aboriginals. That may not help the political crusades of the aboriginal lobby, who continue to fight for a hierarchy of victimhood. But it would present a much more accurate picture of violence against women, if race were truly an important factor here.

The truth is, the vast majority of women killed in Canada are not aboriginal. Between 1980 and 2012, 6,551 women in Canada were murdered. Among them, 5,534 were not aboriginal, according to the RCMP report.

But does that really matter? It shouldn't.

The real question we have to start asking ourselves is why we keep distinguishing between racial backgrounds when it comes to addressing violence against women.

Manitoba's Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Minister Eric Robinson unveiled a monument earlier this month at The Forks in Winnipeg to honour Canada's 1,200 missing and murdered aboriginal women. Why just aboriginal women? Why not all murdered and missing women?

Race-based agendas like these perpetuate an us-versus-them mentality. It's racial segregation. And segregation breeds contempt.

It's not just counterproductive. It's actually hurtful to non-aboriginal families whose mothers, sisters, and daughters have also been victims of murder.

I don't know how long it's going to take for this country to learn that as long as we continue to divide and categorize ourselves based on race, the more difficult it will be to reduce racial tension in our communities.

At some point we have to realize we're all Canadians, we all have the same rights and protection under the law, and that the colour of our skin doesn't matter.

It shouldn't, anyway.

I wish people would stop pretending that it does.