Listen to each other and stand together, urged a speaker at the annual Stolen Sisters Memorial March in Victoria on Saturday.
“It is important for many of us not to feel alone, to feel safe,” said Coreen Child (Yakawilas), speaking as a member of the B.C. Minster’s Advisory Council on Indigenous Women.
“The most powerful gift that you can give to your people is to listen,” she said, recognizing the “deep, deep sadness that we all carry.”
Child addressed about 1,000 people who marched from Our Place on Pandora Avenue along Government Street to the legislature to remember and advocate for the more than 1,100 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
These include women who have been lost on B.C.’s infamous Highway of Tears, a 720-kilometre stretch of the Yellowhead Highway 16 between Print Rupert and Prince George, as well as those in in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and on Vancouver Island.
“As a Kwakiutl woman, when we see our children and families going through places of hurt and feeling challenged and alone … Our biggest piece that I hear from our families is that they want to be heard,” Child said later.
Victoria Pruden (Sihpiko Kapawat Piyesiw Skoteau Iskwew), provincial women’s representative for the Métis Nation of B.C., said she wants everyone to think about “what kind of personal commitment can we all make, whether we are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to help.”
Pruden was referring to indifference, violence and dehumanization of Indigenous women and girls. “The Colten Boushie case has again highlighted the really painful, terrifying, dehumanization of Indigenous people,” she said.
Boushie, a 22-year-old member of the Red Pheasant First Nation, was shot in the head at a farm in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Gerald Stanley, the 56-year-old farmer charged with second-degree murder in his death, was found not guilty, sparking racial tensions and leading to protest rallies in many Canadian communities.
Pruden said Indigenous women have lived with the threat of violence for generations.
“It needs to change, and I think that is a really important part of reconciliation,” she said. “How can everyone in Canada — all communities — how can we begin to identify when things like this are happening? Identify when women and girls are at risk? And intervene.”
Pruden, who is executive director at Bridges for Women Society in Victoria, spoke of losing a friend who was hitchhiking in northern B.C. “Exactly what kind of crime was that? She didn’t have a vehicle. Poverty should be a crime punishable by death?”
People can perform simple acts on a daily basis, she said.
“I think it is really important when people hear racism, when they hear disrespectful talk about Indigenous people, Indigenous women, to say something. Be an example.”
If you see a woman or girl who seems to be at risk or in distress, “don’t just walk by,” she said. “Do something. Call police. Ask her if she is OK. Let’s try to do whatever we can to increase compassion and understanding.”
