A northern Manitoba First Nation is holding its first Red Dress Day event on Monday as the community mourns one of its own.
In March, Ashlee Shingoose of St. Theresa Point First Nation was identified as the previously unknown victim of a Winnipeg serial killer. She was given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, which means Buffalo Woman, by Indigenous community members.
Shingoose, who police believe was murdered in March 2022, is among several known missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls from the Island Lake and Red Sucker Lake region of northern Manitoba, about 450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
Red Dress Day has been observed on May 5 since 2010 as a day to honour and remember missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Organizer Tanya Dawn McDougall says Shingoose’s case is part of why St. Theresa Point is marking Red Dress Day for the first time this year.
Community members will also honour Precious Pascal, Theresa Robinson, Kathleen Wood, Annie Little, Tammy Nattaway, Charlotte Wood and Andrea Harper.
The event is an example of St. Theresa Point’s resilience, said McDougall, who is also the local school’s mental health advocate.
“We’re not going to shy away from how much it hurts. We’re going to do our best to challenge and contribute to the solution,” she told CBC News on Friday.
On Monday, high school and middle school students will first gather in the gym to hear speeches, light candles for the women and name them, McDougall said.
After, they’ll hold a spirit dance, then walk with all 1,200 school-age children and participate in a buffalo call — a collective prayer McDougall described as a loud and short call to release hurt and pain.
In recent weeks, organizations in the community have held several workshops on making red dresses and skirts for girls and women to wear on Monday.
McDougall said she also addressed boys and girls directly in their classrooms on the risks they face as First Nations people and the responsibilities they have to protect each other and themselves.
“It was heavy,” she said. “It’s a hard fact to state and explain to children, but they are getting older, and we have to prepare them to be warriors.”
Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be murdered compared to non-Indigenous women in Canada, according to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
The intent of making kids aware of that is not to instill fear, said McDougall.
“I want them to have this awareness, so that they know they are part of challenging that statistic.”
There are other initiatives underway to help protect Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people, including the Red Dress Alert system.
That system, similar to Amber Alerts used for children, would inform the public when an Indigenous woman or girl goes missing.
The federal government announced in October it would contribute $1.3 million over three years for Giganawenimaanaanig, the province’s MMIWG2S+ implementation committee, to develop the pilot program for Manitoba.
Denise Cook, the project lead for the pilot, says her team hopes to tackle gaps in service that MMIWG families have experienced.
“We are doing groundbreaking work that’s going to save lives and that is needed, and that is going to give something to the families when they are looking for their loved one,” she said.
“The tragedy of lots of community and family members is the response that they’ve received.”
Cook says the project is still in its first phase, and details on when or through which media the alerts will be communicated haven’t been decided. Cellphone alerts, for example, may not be as effective in some northern and rural communities, she said.
Her five-person team, some of whom have been impacted by MMIWG, has held nearly two dozen community and family consultations around the province since December, to help address gaps and provide guidance on development, she said.
With each community session, a memory table displaying pictures of MMIWG has grown.
“We have hit the ground running, and we do have limited time … because we know the urgency of MMWG2S+,” Cook said.
An interim report on the consultations is expected to be published in June, with hopes the alert system will be ready this fall, Cook said.
Its framework could eventually be adapted nationally or serve as a model in other jurisdictions and provinces, she said.
WATCH | St. Theresa Point honours MMIWGs on Red Dress Day:
St. Theresa Point to honour Ashlee Shingoose, other area MMIWGs
On Thursday, the Downtown Community Safety Partnership and the province announced a new specialized team as part of the downtown patrol to help Indigenous women feel safe in Winnipeg.
Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said the provincial funding for the team is part of her government’s efforts to empower and protect Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse Manitobans, as is an endowment fund to support families who are searching for a loved one.
Sixty per cent of the fund will go to Giganawenimaanaanig to manage and disperse to families, Fontaine previously said. The province will distribute the remaining 40 per cent to Indigenous-led events and programming.
She said the province would have more to announce on the endowment fund on Monday.
