Native sex trade crossing international borders through Lake Superior

A sex trade involving Native women from Minnesota's northern reservations is using freighters on Lake Superior to traffic victims between Duluth and Canada, according to research by Christine Stark, a University of Minnesota Duluth student completing her master's degree in social work.

"In an ongoing project focused on the trafficking of Native women on ships in Duluth, it was found that the activity includes international transport of Native women and teens, including First Nation women and girls brought down from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to be sold on the ships and in Duluth and Superior," Stark wrote in the Star Tribune. "Native women, teen girls and boys, and even babies have been sold for sex on the ships."

We discuss the problem of sex trafficking in northern Minnesota.