Red Dress Project
The REDress Project was started by Jamie Black, a mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish artist that “highlights the epidemic of violence against Indigenouswomen." [reference]
In Canada, May 5 is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
On June 3, 2019, the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women released its final MMIWG report at the grand hall of the Canadian Museum of History. Chief Commissioner, Marion Buller, a former B.C. judge stated that the commission is “holding up a mirror to the country" and that "the significant persistent and deliberate pattern of systemic racial and gendered human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses — perpetuated historically and maintained today by the Canadian state — designed to displace Indigenous peoples from their lands, social structures, and governance; and to eradicate their existence as nations, communities, families, and individuals, is the cause of the disappearances, murders and violence experienced by Indigenous people ... and this is genocide." [reference]
The final report has 231 separate “calls for justice," which Buller said are “not mere recommendations or optional suggestions. They are legal imperatives." [reference]. Read more HERE and HERE.
Read about Tia Wood, Cree, who organized a Red Dress Jingle Dance (2017) to honour Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women HERE, and watch the jingle dance HERE.
Recommended Reading
Missing Nimama, by Melanie Florence
Read about Melanie Florence winning the 2016 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award for Missing Nimama, “a children's picture book that imagined one of those stories: a mother, the daughter she's left behind and the loving relationships between three generations of women in that family." [reference]
