May 5 is Red Dress in Canada, the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. It is a day to remember the thousands who have disappeared across Canada since colonization. It is a reminder of systemic gender violence, sexual exploitation, and racial discrimination.
The REDress Project began in 2012 by Jamie Black, a Metis artist from Manitoba, as an aesthetic response to the national issue of murdered and missing women. Her original intention was to hang 600 red dresses in public places as a visual reminder of the women no longer with us. Exhibitions were subsequently installed in many places across Canada with a permanent exhibition established 2014 in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Jamie saw the color red as a “calling back of the spirits” to give our missing and murdered women a chance to be among us again and to have their voices heard.
Red Dress Day is important because it brings attention to an important conversation, how to ensure that the sacredness of all women is respected in society and how to create equal opportunity for all marginalized populations. It is day to remember those who are no longer with us, and a call to action to ensure that justice is served. Human rights underscore the need for equality and justice. We stand in solidarity with impacted families and communities and seek ways of healing together.
Cara loved red dresses as a little girl ~ or perhaps it was that I enjoyed dressing her in red. She was my special Christmas gift in 1974 and having a new red dress every year was part of our seasonal tradition.
She is fourth from the left, second row from the bottom, in the above collage.
Her story, as readers know, ended in a field near Sherwood Park, where she was found September 1, 1997, by a farmer harvesting his crop. She disappeared from the streets of Edmonton and has been missing a month before she was found.
Cara’s story is among many, an estimated 4000 across Canada, that continue to challenge us with many questions. Not only, how can we prevent further tragedies but what about the many unsolved cases? How can so many murderers and their accomplices remain silent? Surely there are people who know what happened.
Hopefully, those who care are ready to build a more healthy and equitable society.
