There’s this tradition of wearing red underwear on New Year’s Eve. This year, let’s try something different...
This red dress thing is not my idea. It’s Jamie Black’s, the artist responsible for the REDress Project.
It’s highly probable that you don’t know the reason behind this project, because very little has been said. The origin is something terrible, and it is really a thing you can find in this Wikipedia article:
“The missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) epidemic affects Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, including the First Nations, Inuit, Métis (FNIM), and Native American communities.“
For years, an alarming number of indigenous women have been disappearing at a rate around 10 times higher than the general disappearance rate, depending on the area. And we know this statistic solely because Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada finally decided to do something and look into this, resulting in this report, which reads:
“[...] between the years 1980 and 2012, Indigenous women and girls represented 16% of all female homicides in Canada, while constituting only 4% of the female population in Canada.”
There are some documentaries about this crisis worth watching here.
This is not a thing from the past.
And the effort put into solving this targeted attacks is weak to say the least, especially in the US, where’s there is not even a reliable database. Even in Canada very little is being done (read this article), ignoring the results of their own report.
So, please, if you care, share.
EDIT: Here you have a Tumblr blog where they keep track of this issue. I just found out it existed because they reblogged this post. I’m deeply honoured and I hope this tiny bit helps giving voice to the victims and the whole First Nations People.
