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By Josh Hall | @Vancan19

red dress day -- 5 p.m., in capstone

Walking together for healing: Red Deer to gather Monday for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples

May 4, 2025 | 8:00 AM

The annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness Walk and Gathering is happening in Red Deer Monday evening, and organizers say the more who come out from all walks of life, the more it will help the cause.

Happening on Red Dress Day, May 5, the walk will begin at 5 p.m. at the Red Deer Common Ground Garden Project in Capstone (5581 45 Street). It will wind over to Safe Harbour, and return back to the garden for a community feast and gathering.

Kelley Arnold, the Nanâtawihowin Cultural Connections program director at Red Deer Native Friendship Society, shared that the reason behind a tweak to the name is intended to acknowledge that men and boys have gone missing and been murdered as well as women and girls — the latter being the historical focus of the day.

“Definitely for loved ones, this day is very hard. It brings up a lot of memories. For most them, it’s memories of how unheard they’ve been. There hasn’t [historically] been the same effort put into investigations [for an Indigenous person] are there would be for someone who is non-Indigenous,” said Arnold, who shared some details of a cousin who went missing in the late ’90s.

“Thank goodness for her family who really pushed for people to search for her. She went missing right within Red Deer, and it took weeks and weeks to find her. When they finally did, she was in the river. We honour her every year by putting roses in the river.”

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Arnold notes there are many more champions these days within the RCMP, who push themselves for timelier and more thorough investigations — including her own two sons.

Pushing, and very hard, is indeed what’s led to recent breaks in high profile cases, such as that of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, whose remains were found in a Manitoba landfill earlier this year.

But it took years of pressure from loved ones to ensure the appropriate actions were taken.

And even when a loved one’s remains are found, ‘bittersweet’ only begins to describe the reaction, because other layers, perhaps related to the perpetrator and the penalty they got or didn’t, linger.

Arnold notes the walk will begin with a pipe ceremony and for good reason.

“That way, you know it’s been started in a really good way, and when you start with ceremony, you’re asking for help from our Ancestors. We’re setting good intentions,” she says.

For Lindsay Beaulieu, who has spent several years with Red Deer’s Urban Indigenous Voices Society, she’s seen the progression of the walk from the early 2000s when it was led by a longstanding local group called ‘Walking With Our Sisters’ — now the Red Feather Women.

“It sucks that the reason we’re coming together is so sad, yet when we come together and have our drummers, our community, as well as our non-Indigenous community members coming out to help sit and heal with us, that [creates] awareness [which] I believe is a bridge,” Beaulieu says.

“I do hope that we get to the point where there’s so much awareness, one day we won’t have to walk. I think we gather for that dream where we’re all healed and we’re a community again.”

Beaulieu adds that while this subject is hard, there’s an important lesson.

“We talk a lot about our intergenerational traumas, but we also have intergenerational strengths,” she says.

“It’s up to us which we pull from each day. When community comes and gathers with us as Indigenous people, it shows that with compassion and love, we will accept you as family.”

All are welcome to the walk, and attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket; chairs will be provided.

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