Calgarians will gather at city hall for a Friday night vigil to honour the National Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW).
The celebration will include a woman who embarked on an incredible journey to raise awareness and fight for systemic change.
It’s the seventh year Stephanie English and a group have made the 190 kilometre trek from Piikani Nation to Calgary for the ‘Sisters in Spirit’ rally. For English, the day is extremely personal after she lost, not one, but two daughters.
“Both daughters were murdered and taken early from me,” she says. “They left back their children.”
Her daughter Alison English died in 2015 in what RCMP ruled a suicide.
The following year, her daughter Joey English died of a drug overdose before her body was dismembered and discarded. The crime led to 40-year old Joshua Weise being sentenced to 18 months in jail and three years of probation.
English has been vocal for years about how police responded to her daughters’ deaths.
“It continues every day because our people are still being murdered,” she says. “Our brothers and sisters are still being abused from the authorities.”
Statistics Canada finds on average, homicide rates among Indigenous women are nearly six times higher than among non-Indigenous women.
English says she will keep walking until she sees some big changes.
The group making the long trek from Brocket, Alta. arrived in Calgary and met up with the rally at Olympic Plaza on Friday afternoon.
Work continues on alert system for missing Indigenous women
The federal government says it’s making progress on a pilot program for an alert system that would inform the public when an Indigenous woman or girl is missing.
The federal and Manitoba governments have been working on a Red Dress Alert system.
It would be similar to Amber Alerts, which are used when a child is abducted, and the aim is to eventually make it countrywide.
Gary Anandasangaree, the federal minister for Crown-Indigenous Relations, says a Manitoba Indigenous group has been selected to lead the pilot, which was first announced in May.
Statistics Canada said in a report last year that the homicide rate for Indigenous women and girls was six times higher than the rate for their non-Indigenous counterparts.
The federal budget set aside $1.3 million to develop and implement the alert system.