" May 5—Red Dress Day—is one of several days earmarked throughout the calendar year to promote awareness of the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and our Two-Spirit relatives in Canada. This day asks us all to pause and reflect on the deeply rooted white supremacy, patriarchy, and misogyny that creates the social conditions where Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit peoples are systematically excluded from the social, economic, and political fabric of the settler state of Canada.
Further, this day reminds us that this deliberate and violent exclusion from society has created conditions where our women relatives are targeted for physical and sexual violence at a rate of 7 times that of non-Indigenous women, and the supposed “justice” system not only fails to protect them from this harm—it frequently perpetuates colonial violence. These harms remain cloaked under the veil of invisible white male privilege, with white supremacy and patriarchy forming the cornerstone of all settler Canadian institutions and systems. Policing, courts, and prisons are particularly insidious—many activists, community members and researchers have worked hard for decades to expose the justice system for both its covert and overt racist and sexist ideologies that culminate in discriminatory processes and procedures.
For example, police all across this country have been repeatedly criticized for over-policing and under-protecting Indigenous women and girls. Located in Treaty 1, Winnipeg, Manitoba, which has been described by some as ‘ground zero’ for violence against Indigenous women, has seen police malfeasance thrust into the spotlight during a string of recent murders and disappearances where Indigenous women were known to be in local landfills and the police refused to search for our relatives’ bodies. Imagine that—knowing your loved one was murdered, as in the cases of Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, and the still unknown Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe/Buffalo Woman—and their bodies were known to be in a landfill, but the police refuse to search for their remains because they claim they do not have the resources to do so. The Winnipeg Police operate on a budget of $320 million dollars per year, and they don’t have the resources to search for bodies of murdered women that they know are in a landfill. One can’t help but wonder—is it that they don’t have the ‘resources’ to search for remains in a landfill OR do they choose not to allocate the resources they have to search for yet ‘another dead Indian’ woman?
The history of Indigenous women being targeted through the construction of a negative colonial identity has led us to this place today—Indigenous women are being murdered and tossed in the literal garbage and it barely causes the average Canadian to bat an eye, never mind lose sleep or fear for their own children’s lives. Deeply woven into the fabric of our shared and profoundly broken society, lies the narrative that Indigenous women are inherently ‘disposable’ causing many to falsely presume that when an Indigenous woman is murdered, they are somehow responsible for their own death. The rampant and persistent stereotypes of “Indian” women as sexually available, morally loose, addicts and sex workers are dehumanizing, which explains why there is no public outcry when Indigenous women are tossed in a river or a garbage bin and end up in a landfill—because to so many, our lives still do not matter.
May 5—Red Dress Day—is a day to remember our stolen sisters and the family members who lost their loved ones too soon. But it is more than that—it is a day to move beyond awareness towards action—it is a Call to Justice for all Canadians. Canada, I’m not here to tell you we’re sacred and that’s why you should care about this national tragedy—you must recognize our humanity first."
- Written by Christy Anderson
Christy Anderson is Anishinaabekwe, a member of Pinaymootang First Nation and is of Mennonite settler descent. She is a long-term resident of Winnipeg, MB located in Treaty 1 Territory. Christy is a PhD Candidate in Indigenous Feminist Studies at University of Saskatchewan where she studies colonial violence against Indigenous women. Her work examines the intersection of legal and justice studies as well as criminology through an Indigenous feminist lens.
This day asks us all to pause and reflect on the deeply rooted white supremacy, patriarchy, and misogyny that creates the social conditions where Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit peoples are systematically excluded from the social, economic, and political fabric of the settler state of Canada.