How these red ribbon skirts honour the memory of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls [Video]

Jamie Smallboy says hearing the sound of the drums at a Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver several years ago marked a turning point in her life.

Smallboy, who was homeless at the time, says she thought she was hallucinating when she turned the corner onto East Hastings Street to see thousands of Indigenous people and allies marching. When she asked a bystander what they were marching for, she was told it was to honour and remember missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).

“It made me cry because when I was homeless there were girls and women who taught me how to survive … there are some of those girls [who] to this day I don’t know what happened to them. They were part of my daily life and then they were just gone.

“Nobody ever knew what happened to them. They just disappeared.”