Red Dress Day is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People, it takes place on May 5th. Red Dress Day was inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black’s REDress Project. She hung up empty Red Dresses to represent the missing women and girls who are missing. It is reported that in 2014 Police identified 1,181 Indigenous women and girls who went missing or were murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012. This number is also very inaccurate as it does not account for the many unreported, ignored by the government, and non-status First Nations people who went missing. During this day we honour these missing women girls, and two-spirit people and stand in solidarity with them. We must support First Nations organizations and people and actively do some of the Indigenous calls to action.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released a report which talked of the many horrors that the First Nations people of Canada endured. With this came a list of 94 calls to action for the government to prevent these from ever happening again. Some of these calls to action, we ourselves can demonstrate. For example one of the calls to action that I am working on is to educate myself on these histories an learn about them the best I can to prevent the spread of ignorance. I also try to support local First Nations businesses to support economic growth of First Nations people. I will try to continue to be the best ally to First Nations people of Canada to the best of my abilities.

For Red Dress Day, I decided to make an Instagram post in hopes of advertising the Women’s Warrior song procession at lunch. I also hoped to spread awareness of Red dress day at my school and encourage people to wear red in support.