Red dresses lined the trees in Royal City Park Friday evening, lit up by flameless candles flickering along the path.
Among them, community members gathered for the Sisters in Spirit vigil, mourning and honouring the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
A relatively informal event, it was a chance to come together for community and solidarity, to honour and raise awareness about lives lost organized by Guelph Wellington Women in Crisis, the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre and the Guelph Community Health Centre.
Participants gathered to share, go through some breath work, and go on a meditative walk along the path lined with 40 red dresses.
“This vigil represents not only the grief that we collectively feel, but also the power that we can hold in standing together, offering our love and offering our solidarity,” said community activist Kween during the event.
“As a Black woman, I stand here in solidarity with my Indigenous sisters. Our community share a deep rooted history of violence, exploitation and systemic racism.”
Indigenous women represent only five per cent of Canadian women, but accounted for 24 per cent of all female homicide victims between 2015 and 2020, she said.
“The reality is just as devastating for Black women,” she said.
“Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, trans and gender-diverse folks are disappeared and murdered at 12 times the rate than non-Indigenous women,” said GWWIC public educator Cindy McMann. “And that can only keep happening because Canada has effectively ignored and disregarded this crisis, even though it has talked an awful lot about it.”
The final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was released in 2019, and so far, she said, only two of the 231 calls for justice have been implemented.
“That’s despite the vast majority of Canadians actually supporting those calls for justice,” she said. “An implementation timeline has yet to be released, and every day of inaction more people are stolen from us.”
A brain injury advocate, Kween also noted many survivors of gender-based violence – particularly Indigenous women – suffer traumatic brain injuries that go undiagnosed and untreated.
“For many, these brain injuries become lifelong obstacles to physical and mental well-being,” affecting mood, memory and cognitive abilities, and leaving survivors vulnerable to further abuse.
She said there is a strong connection between intimate partner violence, brain trauma and femicide, intentional killing with a gender-related motive.
“Femicide… is often a tragic culmination of long-term abuse, abuse that frequently includes brain trauma. And these are not isolated incidents, but rather the result of ongoing systemic failures that dehumanize and endanger Indigenous women every day.”
She said the evening was about more than just a vigil, but a call to action to demand the protection of women, girls and two-spirited Indigenous people, as well as Black women and beyond.
“The fight for justice and equality and for safety must be intersectional, because our struggles are intertwined. The violence we experience cannot be separated from the racism, sexism and colonialism that continues to shape our lives,” she said.
“As long as one of us suffers, we truly aren’t free,” she said. “We remember, we resist and we rise together.”
