‘More than just stats’: Victoria march for MMIWG centres families

Victoria's Stolen Sisters Memorial March is in its 14th year, and this year will take place on Saturday, Feb. 10. It always maintains the same message — uplifting families.

Every February on and around Valentine’s Day, First Nations, Inuit and Métis people organize marches for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) across the country.

Inspired first by the Women’s Memorial March that started in Vancouver in 1992 after Cheryl Ann Joe, a shíshálh Nation woman, was found murdered, Victoria’s Stolen Sisters Memorial March has taken on a life of its own. Now in its 14th year, the march still maintains the same message — uplifting families.

“It means many things to our community, it’s grassroots, it’s not a protest,” said Lisa deWit, a member of Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Laksilyu clan, who is part of the march’s committee. “This march is centred in love and it’s a memorial to remember women, children and LGBTQ2S+ who have gone missing or been murdered.

“It’s also to hold space for those of us who are mourning, left in limbo or still searching.”

For deWit, whose aunt disappeared in October 2017, these marches that happen across British Columbia and the rest of Canada are needed.

“It’s an opportunity to remind greater society as a whole that this issue is still present,” she said. “Perhaps it inspires others to get curious, to understand the systems that are contributing to our women disappearing and being murdered — (the MMIWG crisis) is more than just stats.”

But the stats are harrowing.

According to the Assembly of First Nations, 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 five per cent of the population of Canada.