WUNRN
Canada
- Art Exhibit Honors Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women
“They
Have Been Loved, & Now They Are Missing”
In
the past 20 years in
“There
has been an awful silence around this,” says Otipemiswak/Michif Nation artist
Christi Belcourt, of
Belcourt’s
newest art exhibit, “Walking
With Our Sisters,” is hoping to visually demonstrate and bring attention to
the hundreds of unsolved disappearances and murders of Indigenous women and
girls across the
As of July 12th, Belcourt had received 608 donated vamps as well as US $5,000 worth of donations for supplies. She has had to place a July 15th deadline on submissions, but hopes to be able to use surplus vamps to illustrate the fact that in reality the number of missing Indigenous women in Canada and the United States is probably much higher than 600 due to unreported cases. This exhibit is very interactive – the vamps are laid out on a 300 foot grey stretch of fabric, and visitors remove their shoes and walk alongside the vamps on red fabric. Tobacco will be available if guests wish to use it for prayer.
“The installation becomes a place for prayer,” Belcourt explains. “There is also sensory memory that people will take with them after leaving the exhibit. It’s not like walking into a space and just seeing work – you have to experience this.”
Indigenous
women are 5-7 times more likely to die from violence than women of any other
race, and experience 3.5 times higher rates of domestic violence and sexual
abuse. Amnesty International,
The government has been largely unresponsive to the epidemic, and has only lately begun to show an interest in stopping in the rape and murder of Indigenous women. Grassroots organizations like Operation Thunderbird, frustrated with the lack of response from officials, have created crowd-source maps that allow people to compile information about missing loved ones.
“Women – who have been the future of the world in the form of its children – are being killed and tortured for rising up against those who oppress them, their children, and the earth we all share,” says the group. “Women that know about nurture and protection are being marginalized – told to sit down and shut up. Aboriginal women, who carry the wisdom, stories, and ancient teachings from long before the world became the civilized cesspool it is today, have little voice in their own governance. As people who care about others, we could only sit by and watch the horrors scroll in front of our eyes for so long before needing to take action. Operation Thunderbird is our contribution to the action of brave women all over the world who are Rising Up and demanding change.”
So
far “Walking With Our Sisters” has booked 25 locations across North
American through 2018, with the first showing at
“This project is about these women,” Belcourt concludes, “paying respect to their lives and existence on this earth. They are sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, and grandmothers. They have been cared for, they have been loved, and now they are missing.”
http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/about/our-sisters/
Our Sisters
For years, organizations have been working to raise
awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, and many have called for or
supported the call for a National Inquiry into this issue including at the most
recent Premier’s meeting in Niagara Falls (July 2013) where there was
widespread support by the Provinces for a National Inquiry. So far, the
Canadian Government has rebuked all calls for a National Inquiry.
The individual stories of the women and girls who have
gone missing and what their families endure is heart wrenching and the growing
list of names is too long to list here. And frankly, it is widely believed that
the 582 women who have been murdered or have gone missing in the last 20 years,
as researched under the Sisters in Spirit Program by the Native Women’s
Association of Canada only scratches the surface. Sadly, the program funding
for Sisters in Spirit was ended in 2010. Many people questions the reasoning
behind ending such a succesful program that was specifically researching the
cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Most recently,