Indigenous and non-Indigenous people came together this afternoon (Monday) outside the Stampede Grounds to observe Red Dress Day.
They gathered to honour the lives of all missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls with drumming, songs and the lighting of the Sacred Fire.
“I want to acknowledge that this is an emotional event for everyone for friends and family.” Cariboo Friendship Society Executive Director Rosanna McGregor said, “I hope that you can take away from today a little bit of peace, some love, some understanding so that we can help one another through this. And I thank every single one of you for coming out today because you’re bringing awareness to this issue and as we go forward and share our experiences here today we bring awareness to what’s been happening, not only to our murdered and missing Indigenous women, I know that we’ve all been touched by some of our brothers that have gone missing as well and we don’t know where they’re at.”
McGregor added it’s a really sad state of where we are in our world today and we come together to pray and to hope that we can provide a little more guidance so that we have better outcomes for the work that we do.
Williams Lake First Nation Chief Willie Sellars also spoke to the crowd saying this really puts things into perspective how small our circles are in our communities.
“We all have somebody that, or know somebody that has been impacted with what this day represents, it’s a conversation that we need to keep in the mainstream and we need to continue to have, although there is a trigger and there is trauma that comes from it, it’s by having this conversation how we’re going to be able to break that generational gap moving forward into the future.”
Sellars added we stand in this circle together and it brings us hope and it brings us strength.
“And really ignites that soul peace that there is hope in the future and for our future generations that we are going to be able to break that cycle. You look around the circle today and we have leadership from numerous communities, not only in Indian Country, but we have Municipality and CRD representation as well.”
Something going on in the Cariboo you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
