Content warning: The following story contains references to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, please take care reading.
On Sunday, May 4, shíshálh Nation is hosting its second march for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
The event starts May 4 at 10 a.m. People are to gather at the corner of Cowrie Street and Ocean Avenue and from there will march together to Hackett Park. At the park, there will be speakers, vendors and performers, says the event announcement.
Annually, May 5 is the national day of awareness for MMIWG, also known as Red Dress Day, and events honouring the missing and murdered women and girls are organized around the country.
Last year, the first annual shíshálh march honoured all missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, those from this territory and particularly Cheryl Ann Joe, a 26-year-old shíshálh woman murdered in Vancouver in 1992.
Joe’s murder was the impetus for the annual Valentine’s Day Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver. In the decades since she died, the awareness that Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately victims of homicide and violence has grown but the gap in homicide rates remains.
Family members of Joe were both involved in organizing that first event and in the march itself, which included hundreds of people proceeding through downtown Sechelt.
Indigenous women are four times as likely to be victims of violence compared to non-Indigenous women, according to statistics from the Assembly of First Nations. From 2001 to 2014, “the average rate of homicides involving Indigenous female victims was four times that of those involving non-Indigenous female victims,” said the website.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that closed in 2019 concluded that Canada had carried out genocide against Indigenous peoples. The report found “that persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people.” It released 231 calls for justice directed at “governments, institutions, social service providers, industries and all Canadians,” most of which have yet to be meaningfully addressed.
