Residents marked Red Dress Day with a march to Rotary Park, where community members mourned family and friends who died or have gone missing because of violence against Indigenous people and called on government leaders and communities for action.
The march began at the Operation Street Angel building, which was led by an RCMP escort for traffic safety as well as the Suk?ni Singers, and travelled down 1st St. S, ending at the bandstand in Rotary Park, with speakers and a community barbecue.
Aqam Nasukin (Chief) Cheryl Casimer thanked the community for coming out to "generate and create awareness about this crisis that plagues this country."
"Canada needs to do better. British Columbia needs to do better," Casimer said. "We need to do better and we can only do that by working together in partnership with one another."
Casimer said only two action items from Calls for Justice — a 2019 report that identified 231 recommendations to address violence against Indigenous people — have been implemented to date.
"That is totally unacceptable, because what that means to me is that it's not being taken serious enough in this country," said Casimer. "What that means to me is that our government representatives aren't taking it seriously."
Casimer encouraged people to call on their elected government representatives to take action.
Barbie Whiskeyjack, with the Indian Residential School Survivor Society, provided some disturbing context faced by Indigenous communities.
Whiskeyjack said Indigenous women are four times more likely than non-Indigenous women to be victims of violence, and that Indigenous women make up 16 per cent of all female homicide victims and 11 per cent of missing women, yet Indigenous people make up only 4.3 per cent of the population of Canada.
Whiskeyjack also said around 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or have been murdered between 1956 and 2016.
"It's important to know and to remember and to say the names of the loved ones who are still missing," said Whiskeyjack.
Other speakers included Amy Meier, who raised awareness about the case of Christopher Newton, a 33-year-old man who was reported missing in Nelson last summer, while Michele Sam reminded everyone that ʔa·kisk̓aqǂiʔit is the Ktuanxa place name for the area that settlers later called Cranbrook, and spoke about how violence has affected her family and community.
