Over a thousand attend Women’s Memorial March for MMIWG in Vancouver On Valentines Day

Every February on and around Valentines day, First Nations, Inuit and Métis people organize marches for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) across the country.

Hundreds of people walked through Vancouver Wednesday, February 14, to mark the 33rd annual Women’s Memorial march in honour of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

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 in whole make up only five per cent of the population of Canada. There is no reason we should have so many people missing in our country, let alone women and girls that are supposed to be kept safe. In our country, this is an epidemic that needs to end and the way to do that, is to bring awareness. This event serves as a safe to remember those who have been lost and put focus on this severe and rampant problem we are seeing across North America. Every year, beautiful Ribbon skirts are made for the families of the Missing and murdered. In order for the violence against these women to end, it must be shone a light on and addressed. There is so much work to be done to keep women and girls in these communities safe.

The walk is led by flower girls, whose job is to, among others, place a flower at each place the march stops to mark where an Indigenous woman went missing or was found. this year Ten-year-old Sariah Jacobs-Greene is one of the flower girls leading this years march.

"There are so many women and girls that are suffering," she said. "There are so many people out there who won't look, who won't care ... but when there's a white person missing or non-Native they'll look for them right away."

Jacobs-Greene said events like these heal her heart, she sees everyone who attended Wednesday's march as people who care.

We are hoping by bringing awareness to this issue, we are able to inspire people in our communities to get educated on the systems that are contributing to women in these communities not being protected and stand to make a change. And to also bring light that this is still a very real issue that we are dealing with in our country today.

Organizers of the event say the march was founded in 1992 after the murder of Cheryl Ann Joe, a shíshálh Nation woman who was found dead on Powell Street. They say safety of women in the Downtown Eastside is still an issue and there’s hardly been any change after all these years and despite recommendations from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, they are still seeing the same issues.