L-R: Diane Gardipy, Laurie Patterson Leith and Donna Bishop, who each participated in the ceremony and march for the National Day of Awareness and Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) outside Red Deer City Hall on May 5, 2022. (rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

"no more"

Red Dress Day event about building hope, says one community grandmother

May 5, 2022 | 1:47 PM

A red hand painted on her face.

A red skirt in memoriam.

Hope in her heart.

Her feet pounding the pavement with others’.

Donna Bishop, a mentor and kokum — or grandmother — at the Red Deer Native Friendship Centre, stood, prayed, listened and then walked with about 100 others after speeches, song and truth was shared outside City Hall on Thursday for the annual Red Dress Day event.

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The event was taking place as part of the National Day of Awareness & Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls and Women (MMIWG). It was organized by a group called the Red Feather Women, as well as Shining Mountains Living Community Services.

Bishop told rdnewsNOW that coming to the gathering year after year means building hope.

“We’re walking for the future, with the transgender, LGBTQ+ and Indigiqueer community, law enforcement, and community as a whole. But it’s a memorial and we should never forget what’s happened and continues to happen to the vulnerable. The cat’s out of the bag and that’s when change comes,” says Bishop, who’s Métis and Cree.

Last summer, the federal government committed $180 million towards programs to support a national MMIWG action plan — a document which has received much criticism for not being good enough.

The plan (viewed here) contains 231 Calls for Justice, and came in response to the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, released in June 2019, as well as the report entitled Métis Perspectives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and LGBTQ2S+ People, released in June 2019 by Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak (LFMO).

The inquiry found Indigenous women and girls represented 16 per cent of all female homicide victims between 1980 and 2012, despite accounting for just over four per cent of the female population.

It also found Indigenous women are 16-times likelier to be killed or go missing than white women.

“This is systemic. There can’t just be money for one or two people at an organization, for example the police, to do a project. These things must include the whole community. We see the residual effects of this, of residential schools, with addictions at an all-time high, and no fresh water on reserves,” says Bishop. “It’s an old cycle of misery, which means the need for medication, which causes addiction and mental illness, and then breakdowns in parenting.”

Taken in the Sixties Scoop, Bishop never knew her biological parents until she turned 35. She grew up with an adopted, and loving family, she notes, in the Edmonton area, but has long called the Red Deer area home.

She says the key to getting out of the cycle of misery is to improve things like health care and education, plus access to mental health supports, and taking programs to Indigenous communities.

“Half our people don’t have proper transportation or they’re impoverished. That’s the kind of hope we’re building. We’re getting the barriers out of the way.”

About the red hand, very much strategically placed over her mouth, Bishop harkened back to younger days.

“I only speak for myself, but to me it means I don’t have to shut my face, or my pie-hole, anymore. That’s how derogatory it was growing up. As a female, you had certain ways you were supposed to act. You were to be seen, not heard,” she says.

“No more. No one’s holding a hand over my mouth.”