Today in The Conversation Canada, we present two articles about Indigenous women: one about listening to stories from the past and the other about present-day problems.

Jane Arscott, a scholar from Athabasca University who works on issues related to gender equality, writes a very personal account of her observations from attending the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) hearings held earlier this month in Edmonton. What’s often overlooked in Canada’s discussion about MMIWG “s the fact that each missing and murdered woman was loved. The hearing rooms vibrated with emotions.”

New research conducted by the University of British Columbia has produced some alarming results: Indigenous peoples, and especially Indigenous women, are more likely to suffer an injury – at work, falls, suicides, assaults and even injuries resulting from medical errors – than non-Indigenous people. Mariana Brussoni and M. Anne George from UBC say their research suggests “that addressing inequalities — in income, education, employment, housing conditions and other markers of disadvantage — will help narrow the gap.”

Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Arinjay Banerjee from the University of Saskatchewan and Karen Mossman from McMaster University tell us that bats also played a role in pandemics like SARS. But because bats don’t seem to come down with the diseases, their immune systems may provide a clue on how humans could also survive future pandemics.

And from bats…to Batman. I’ve been a big Batman fan since the Adam West days, but the verdict is still out as far as I’m concerned on Ben Affleck’s take on the Caped Crusader. And apparently I’m not the only one who has troubles with the latest version of Batman and the other DC Comics heroes in the new Justice League movie. J. Andrew Deman from the University of Waterloo writes about the problems superhero movies encounter when several costumed characters unite on the screen. Holy crappy movie Batman!