Red dress day is on May 5th, and it’s an opportunity for the community to come together and raise awareness for the murdered and missing Indigenous women across North America. It all started by a Métis woman named Jaime Black in 2010, where she did an off photoshoot art project. It raised awareness and caught on among the different provinces.
A high school in Coquitlam called Charles Best got together to hang red dresses among the trees across the street. On these red dresses there were pictures and stories printed and pasted on the dresses.
These pictures and brief stories and names caused the whole visual to be more personal and touch people in a different way. People walked along and stopped to read and understand the injustice that took place and continues to take place against these Indigenous women in North America.
This was such a powerful way to present the dresses along the street because many students and members of the Coquitlam community walk down Como Lake and would see the display that the students put up.
With inspiration from activist Stephanie Elickus Rivers, who has hung over 500 red dresses across Canada, high school students in Coquitlam have put up a red dress display to draw attention to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.https://t.co/CSTAZnXA6p
— CBC British Columbia (@cbcnewsbc) May 5, 2022
So many different schools got together to raise awareness by either making beaded/sewed mini red dresses, or making signs to hang up around the schools. Many of the signs had statistics on them, or images with a red hand across a woman’s face saying how their lives matter and why red dress day is a thing.
So, why the colour red? Red represents blood, anger and love but is also very eye-catching especially when it’s in places like trees. The colour red is believed to be one of the only colours able to be seen by spirits. So when communities come together and wear red on days like May 5th the spirits of those missing/murdered Indigenous woman know that we are standing along side them.
Today is Red Dress Day. It is a day when we honour missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls & gender diverse people. We remember & uplift them. We support their families. We recognize this disproportionate violence as a national tragedy. We advocate for change. #MMIWG2S pic.twitter.com/TLIhVPq6ks
— BC David (@BCindigenousguy) May 5, 2022