Communities across the country will gather today to honour and remember Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people who never came home.
Known as Red Dress Day, May 5th is set aside each year to bring awareness to the disproportionate levels of violence against Indigenous women.
Despite accounting for less than 5 percent of Canada’s population, Indigenous women and two-spirit people make up nearly a quarter of all homicide victims.
While the BC Assembly of First Nations encourages the gatherings, they are also calling for more government action to address the crisis.
They are calling on both BC and Ottawa to work with First Nations to address the emergency’s underlying factors: colonialism, racism, and sexism.
To do so, they say all parties must partner to ensure that concrete and meaningful progress is made on the priorities identified by the National Inquiry.
Earlier this week, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion to recognize the on-going crisis as a Nation-wide Emergency.
They also agreed to work on setting up a Red Dress Alert system, to notify people when an Indigenous woman goes missing.
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