About 31 red dresses on the BMH Green on Monday, May 5 serve as a reminder of the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people in Canada. 

This was done as part of Red Dress Day, a national day of remembrance that began in 2010. It calls attention to the disproportionate rates of violence toward Indigenous women. According to the federal government, 63 per cent of Indigenous women have experienced physical or sexual assault in their lifetime. 

The Office of Indigenous Relations and the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office held an event to honour Red Dress Day, featuring a sacred fire and hanging of the red dresses at the BMH Green. The event then moved to the Applied Health Sciences Expansion Building, where the film, Beautiful Disaster, was played, along with a guest speaker presentation by Ojibway/Mohawk filmmaker Cher Obediah, along with a question-and-answer period.

“The feeling is quite sombre, but it’s also quite uplifting to know that people are still interested,” described Indigenous knowledge keeper, Elder Myeegun Henry. 

This is the third year UW has held a ceremony for Red Dress Day. The addition of a guest speaker was new this year.

“It’s a pretty complex and hard topic to talk about. But I think it needs to be spoken about,” Henry said.

Each dress, each of a different size and style, is accompanied by a sign describing a missing or murdered person it represents. For example, one of the stories and dresses represents Amanda Bartlett of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Bartlett was 17 years old when she went missing from a group home in Winnipeg in 1996. Winnipeg police opened a missing person case for Bartlett 12 years later in 2008, despite family members reporting the disappearance to police several times before this. 

“I’d have to say everybody has been affected personally, whether it was in their own family or in their community,” Henry said. “I think almost everybody has some story – at least they’ve heard about it in their community, or their families were definitely affected by it.”

The dresses will be on display until the end of this week.