A new database of facial tissue depth measurements of Mi’kmaq people in Nova Scotia will mean more accurate 3D forensic facial reconstruction in difficult-to-solve missing person cases.
However, researchers’ plans to create a similar database of other aboriginal groups in Canada have been put on hold due to a lack of funding.
“If we could find the grants and … somebody was willing to give us some funding for this project, we would take it across the country,” says Tanya Peckmann, a forensic anthropologist at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
Over the last 10 years, Peckmann and colleagues have used ultrasound machines to collect skin thickness measurements on a broad sample of Mi’kmaq adults and children in the province.
“We worked mostly with the Eskasoni community but also with other Mi’kmaq communities in Nova Scotia,” she said.
In cases where unidentified remains are discovered, the measurements can then be used to create a 3D forensic facial reconstruction, or clay model, of somebody in that group.
The data was recently published in two separate studies in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and Journal of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine.
The measurements were taken on 392 volunteers between ages three and 17 and another 152 between 18 and 75.
“It is quite a robust database,” Peckmann said. “We want that data to represent a contemporary population.”
Nineteen different points on the face were measured. Subjects were divided into age groups spanning 10 years, so the database represents an average in the various groups.
It was about a dozen years ago, while doing research on forensic facial construction, that Peckmann first learned no tissue-depth database existed for aboriginal people in North America.
“There were these databases for Hispanic populations, for African-American populations, for white European populations, but I was astounded to find out there was nothing for First Nations communities or aboriginal populations anywhere in North America.”
When unidentified human remains are found, Peckmann, a consultant to the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service, examines the bones and creates a biological profile that includes information on age, gender, ancestry, stature and whether there was disease or trauma.
RCMP then put that profile into missing-person databases to see if it matches anyone.
“It may not match any of the missing people, or it may match more than one.
“You can get a DNA sample (from the remains), but it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t compare it. … If you don’t know who this person is related to, that (DNA) profile means nothing.
“The next step would be to put a face on that person, on the skull, and in order to do that you need what is called tissue-depth measurements.”
Tissue depth at various points greatly affect the appearance of the face and vary between males and females, and people of different ages and ancestries.
“We showed in our research that the tissue depths vary substantially between Mi’kmaq populations and the white European population,” Peckmann said.
Before the existence of the database, if the skull of an unidentified person of Mi’kmaq ancestry was discovered, “you would put a face on this unknown skull, but it wouldn’t be representative of who that person was during life so the person would still be unidentified.”
Peckmann and her collaborators had originally hoped to collect similar measurements for all major aboriginal groups across the country.
“But it has taken us 10 years just to get the data for this community, and part of the reason is the lack of funding. There is just really no funding out there. We have really struggled to get money to be able to do these projects.
“This is a start, but they are not representative of the entire First Nations community in Canada, so we do want to take this across the country.”
An RCMP report released last year acknowledged that from 1980 to 2012, 1,181 aboriginal women were murdered or disappeared in Canada.
Peckmann collaborated on the database project with Sgt. Michel Fournier of the RCMP’s forensic facial identification services as well as Mary Manhein and Ginesse Listi of the geography and anthropology department at Louisiana State University.