Last June we kicked off fundraising efforts supporting young girls of colour by raising funds to sponsor 10 girls through the Pretty Brown Girls Dream Program. Thank you for your purchases from this collection as we’ve raised over $2224CAD to date for the Pretty Brown Girl D.R.E.A.M. Program!
Ranked by NBC News as one of the top seven organizations dedicated to empowering girls, Pretty Brown Girl’s mission is to educate girls of color and encourage self-acceptance by cultivating social, emotional & intellectual well-being. Pretty Brown Girl is committed to inspiring positive self-esteem, leadership and build sisterhood among our girls and young women, but nothing would be possible without the generous support of people like us. Ella After Wax Co stands in solidarity with all those standing up against systemic race-based violence and racism in Canada, the United States and around the world.
My next project comes at a time in my personal life where I’m coming to terms with generational assimilation within my own family. I have merely scratched the surface of a complicated past, displacement and the gender inequality long imposed by the Canadian “Indian Act”. I’ve spent countless hours since my early teens following Indigenous Feminisms in their quest for equality; I was on a search for answers. Perhaps because of the shroud of secrecy & shame my family has carried it always made me more curious and desperate for knowledge. I just couldn’t understand how a culture so rich in core family values, traditions and spirituality could have become a burden to my grandmothers heart. Discovering my indigenous heritage in all its beauty despite the past & its rippling consequences has been not only educational, but more importantly the process has been healing.
I’ve learnt in time indigenous peoples hold women to the utmost highest regard, as they give us life. It’s outside of Indigenous communities that lays a dangerous and often deadly systemic problem(s) for all Aboriginal women & girls- First Nations, Métis & Inuit. Statistics show that 70% of the women and girls disappeared from an urban area and 60% were found murdered in an urban area. Only a small number of cases occurred on-reserve (7% of missing cases and 13% of murder cases). Native Women’s Association of Canada’s research indicates that, between 2000 and 2008, Aboriginal women and girls represented approximately 10% of all female homicides in Canada. However, Aboriginal women make up only 3% of the female population.
In December 2015, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission released its entire 6-volume final report. All Canadians are encouraged to read the summary or the final report to learn more about the terrible history of Indian Residential Schools and its sad legacy. Furthermore it’s “94 calls to action” for immediate change of which the government has addressed. Premiere Justin Trudeau promised to fully implement all 94, noting that “meaningful reconciliation will only come when we live up to our past promises and ensure the equality of opportunity required to create a fair and prosperous shared future.”
But as of 2019 only 9 of the 94 calls to action have been completed. As Dr. Cindy Blackstock has stated, “In 2020, it is time to stop feeding the government’s insatiable appetite to be thanked for its inadequate measures and to demand a complete end to the inequality”.
As an indigenous woman with three beautiful Metis daughters today I’m even more concerned with the National Inquiry into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls. In 2018 The National Inquiry’s final report reveals 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. The two volume report calls for transformative legal and social changes to resolve the crisis that has devastated Indigenous communities across the country.Included were TWO HUNDRED & THIRTY ONE “calls for justice”. We’ve seen how quickly the government has responded to the 94 calls to “action” or their lack thereof; we can’t sit idle and wait for them to complete 231 calls for “justice” while women and children are dying at this rate.
“The violence the National Inquiry heard about amounts to a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis, which especially targets women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools and breaches of human and Indigenous rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations.1”
Since speaking to locals about my plans to recreate Jamie Black’s REDress Project here in South Western Ontario I’ve had multiple locals tell me “MMIW is a west coast issue” not only are they sadly mistaken; they’re oblivious to the crisis in their own backyard. More than a quarter (28%) of all cases occurred in British Columbia, followed by Alberta with 16% of cases. Overall, more than half (54%) of cases occurred in the West: 29% of cases occurred in the south (Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec), 6% took place in the North; and 2% took place in the Atlantic provinces. NWAC is still working to confirm where the violence occurred in 8% of cases. These statistics only cover were the act of violence occurred; it doesn’t speak to the fact that in cases such as Cindy Gladeau who was violently raped and murdered in an Alberta hotel room by a trucker driver from Mississauga, Ontario. Which begs me to wonder how many times his travels took him past the Tecumseh Parkway on his way out to the Western territories before he ruthlessly and unapologetically took this beautiful mother & daughters life. Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls is a national crisis and one that must not be overlooked.
I pass a stretch of rural land originally inhabited and sacred land of Delaware and Moravian of the Thames Nations. Today the Tecumseh Parkway is a driving route running along the Thames River that traces the October 1813 pursuit of the British and First Nations armies by the Americans that culminated in the Battle of the Thames, the death of Tecumseh, and the burning of the Moravian village of Fairfield.
In October 2014 at the opening of the sculpture created by Chatham born artist Gordon Reece; chief Greg Peters of Delaware Nations said
“I think the sculptor's rendition here is going to be an excellent marker for the place where Tecumseh fell, but his interpretation is more than just about Tecumseh; it's about First Nations and the people that stood with them.”
The Tecumseh monument & Parkway is the perfect place to stand in solidarity with our First Nations people as we have done in the past and raise awareness for our most vulnerable especially in these unprecedented times. We will be collecting donations of Red Dresses from now until June.20th; local donations can be made by
Text: 519-854-3142
or dresses can be mailed to
70 London Road,
Thamesville Ontario N0L 2K0.
Visit the installation & join the conversation and spread the word using #REDressTecumseh over social media.
There are countless ways to get involved and be part of the change.
Read the “85/94 outstanding calls to action” from the Truth & Reconciliation Report or the “231 Calls for Justice” into the National Inquiry for MMIW; regardless of whether or not you are Indigenous this is a Canadian Crisis that impacts us all.
Participate in conversations and events such as this. Bring your children so they can know Canada’s true history, bare witness to the current crisis so they can be the change this country so desperately needs.
There are several amazing non for profit organizations doing this work DAILY. They are building databases, accessing historical records, helping local communities, sitting with both city and band counsel meetings, and over seeing domestic violence and cultural sensitivity trainings for frontline workers. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has drawn attention to figures from Statistics Canada documenting high rates of violence against Indigenous women. For example, Indigenous women 15 years and older were 3.5 times more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women, according to the 2004 General Social Survey. Violence against Indigenous women and girls is not only more frequent but also more severe. Between 1997 and 2000, the homicide rate for Indigenous women was nearly seven times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous women. Please donate to Native Women’s Association of Canada https://www.nwac.ca/donate/
There is a lot of disagreement about the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) acknowledged in a 2014 report that there have been more than 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women between 1980 and 2012. Indigenous women’s groups, however, document the number of missing and murdered to be over 4,000. The confusion about the numbers has to do with the under-reporting of violence against Indigenous women and girls and the lack of an effective database, as well as the failure to identify such cases by ethnicity. It Starts With Us is another amazing organization looking to partner with others who’ve been documenting Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in their areas to create a community data base. They acknowledge the women, families and communities who have been doing this organizing themselves for decades, especially when police and governments have failed to acknowledge, listen or act despite Indigenous women, Two Spirit and Trans people that have continued to disappear or be murdered. They also graciously accept Pay Pal donations to the account @ItStartsWithUsMMIW
1)National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Reclaiming Power and Place, Volume 1a, p. 50.
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