National Day of Awareness for MMIWG+ and Red Dress Day
May 5 is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG+) in Canada. It is also known as Red Dress Day.
According to Statistics Canada, Indigenous women in Canada are 3 times more likely to be victims of violence than non-Indigenous women. In Alberta, 206 Indigenous women were murdered between 1980 and 2012 – accounting for 28% of all female homicide victims in that time period.
The REDress Project
The REDress Project is an art installation based on an aesthetic response to MMIWG+ as a critical national issue. Métis artist Jaime Black helped inspire the red dress movement, where red dresses are hung from windows and trees to represent the pain and loss felt by loved ones and survivors. The project was made up of 600 community-donated red dresses, which were later placed in public spaces throughout Winnipeg and across Canada.
The artist chose the colour red after speaking with an Indigenous friend who told her that is the only colour spirits can see. Red dresses are used to call the spirits of missing and murdered women and girls back to their loved ones. The goal was to speak to the gendered and racialized nature of violent crimes against Indigenous women and to evoke a presence by marking absence.
Black encourages others to create their own projects, and as a result, some of our ECSD schools and sites have hosted their own REDress art installations.
