the broken typewriter

Created in response to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) epidemic, the Red Dress Project began in 2010, and was inspired by Jamie Black, a Metis artist from Winnipeg.

Red Dress Day is an important day of awareness and helps to honour and remember MMIWG.

Although RCMP numbers from 2014 show that the number of Indigenous women and girls murdered in Canada is 4.5 times higher than women of other ethnic groups, the Minister for the Status of Women, along with the Native Women’s Association of Canada believe a lack of available data hides numbers that are almost four times higher than the RCMP figures.

Each year, on May 5, empty red dresses are hung to commemorate MMIWG throughout Canada. To draw attention to this ongoing issue, people are encouraged to wear a red dress, shirt or ribbon, and attend events like the Fort St. John Metis Society’s Artisan Market which was held at the Festival Plaza on Sunday in conjunction with Red Dress Day.

Since 1970, at least eight Indigenous women and girls are either missing or been found murdered in the North Peace. More recently, two Indigenous women have vanished in Dawson Creek in the last year. Thus far, efforts to locate them have been unsuccessful.

The MMIWG from the North Peace are:

• Micheline Pare, aged 18, disappeared in Hudson’s Hope in July 1970. Her body was found in August 1970.
• Stacey Rogers, aged 17 of Taylor, vanished on her way to visit friends in Fort St. John in 1988.
• Ramona Jean Schular, aged 37 vanished in 2003.
• Rene Lynn Gunning, aged 19 and Krystle Knott aged 16, disappeared in 2005. Their skulls were found near Grande Prairie, AB in 2011.
• Shirley Cletheroe, aged 45 disappeared in 2006.
• Abigail Andrews, aged 28 disappeared in Fort St. John in 2010.
• Pamela Napoleon, aged 42 from Blueberry River First Nation disappeared in 2014. Her body was found in 2014.
• Darylyn Supernant, aged 29 disappeared in Dawson Creek in March 2023.
• Renee Didier, aged 41 disappeared in Dawson Creek in December 2023.

Every one of these MMIWG was someone’s daughter, sister, cousin, wife, mother and in some cases, grandmother. Yet no one has been brought to justice, not even for those women whose bodies were found.