Red Dress Day supporters take to downtown Kitchener

Hundreds of supporters joined survivors for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Walk in downtown Kitchener on Tuesday.

The annual event marks Red Dress Day, the national day of awareness and remembrance of the Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people who have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada.

The walk was organized by The Healing of the Seven Generations (H7G), a local Indigenous support and advocacy group.

Serena Wesley, Program Manager, Dehsahsodre Program, which provides legal services through H7G, told 570 NewsRadio what Red Dress Day means to her.

“This day is literally every day for our people. You know, my mom was murdered when I was young. So, she is a part of the missing and murdered Indigenous. It means so much to me. It’s an honour to be able to help organize this day and to be able to give her a voice because she doesn’t have a voice to give.”

Wesley said giving a voice to the voiceless is a key component of what Red Dress Day is all about.

“We feel like we don’t have enough voice when we go missing. And, we’re looked at, ‘Oh, she lived this kind of lifestyle so this probably what happened to her,’ and there’s no further looking into things until there is a big enough stink made about it. There’s a lot of fighting.”

The search for murdered women in landfills around Winnipeg is an example of this fight. It took a new government in Manitoba, led by Premier Wab Kinew, to allow the investigations to proceed.

Wesley went on to say that she recognizes that First Nations communities aren’t the only ones impacted by violence towards women.

“We’re not the only nation that suffers from sex trafficking and human trafficking, which makes people go missing. We have to focus on our people because that’s our organization, but how we can all work together to solve these problems and help each other, that’s the best way to do it.”

According to the Assembly of First Nations, 16 per cent of all female homicide victims and 11 per cent of all missing women are Indigenous women.

Indigenous women are twice as likely to be victims of intimate partner violence from a current or former partner than non-Indigenous women.

Just over half of Indigenous women have been physically assaulted; 46 per cent have experienced sexual assault. Approximately one-third of non-Indigenous women have been assaulted or sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

Indigenous women make up just 4.3 per cent of the population of Canada.