Today, May 5 is Red Dress Day
Red Dress Day honours the memory and lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2-Spirit+ people across Canada and the US.
Started in 2010 by Métis artist Jaime Black, the day has grown into a movement to educate and create awareness and calls to action for systemic change.
THE TRUTH:
Indigenous women and girls are five times more likely to experience violence than any other population in Canada and this violence tends to result in more serious harm.
Indigenous women make up 16% of all female homicide victims, and 11% of missing women, even though Indigenous people only make up 4.3% of the population of Canada.
Violence against Indigenous women and girls is systemic and a national crisis that requires urgent, informed and collaborative action.
Current public data on MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2-Spirit+ people) oversimplifies and underrepresents the scale of the issue, yet still demonstrates a complex and pervasive pattern of violence against Indigenous women and girls who are often targeted because of their gender and Indigenous identity.
From 2001 to 2014 the average rate of homicides involving Indigenous female victims was four times higher than that of homicides involving non-Indigenous female victims.
(Source: The Assembly of First Nations)