Models in uniquely designed red dresses will hit the runway in British Columbia this weekend to make a powerful fashion statement about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
“The stories that emerge through fashion are deeply moving,” says Kim Coltman, organizer of the two-day Revolutions Red Dress Fashion Festival in Kamloops.
The 63-year-old former model says the eight designers participating in the festival have created items to honor Red Dress Day, the national awareness day for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls celebrated annually on May 5.
“Most of them have been personally affected by this issue,” Coltman says.
Red Dress Day was inspired by Métis artist Jamie Black’s installation project, in which red dresses were seen hanging in public spaces in Canada and the United States as visual reminders of the number of Indigenous women who have been murdered or are missing.
The movement has grown and local communities organize walks, events and educational meetings.
Coltman’s mother was a residential school survivor from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan.
Coltman also describes herself as a survivor. Her childhood was marked by stays in foster homes. She was kidnapped and assaulted when she was a teenager. She says she knows very well the world in which indigenous women can live.
It was fashion that empowered Coltman. She signed with a modeling agency in 1972 and later created her own.
But the issue of violence towards indigenous women and girls remained close to her heart.
When she saw the red dress movement, Coltman says she was inspired and in 2015 founded Fashion Speaks International. The organization has produced fashion shows in Canada, Australia and France highlighting Indigenous designers, models and artists. Each program also draws attention to missing women through stories and photographs.
Coltman says it’s striking to see Indigenous models hold their heads high as they walk the runway. It breaks the behaviors imposed on the approximately 150,000 Indigenous children who were forced to attend residential schools, he says.
“Residential school taught them that they should be seen, not heard, and that they should look at their feet when they walk,” he says. “We need to make our people less invisible.”
Indigenous women and girls in Canada continue to be greatly overrepresented as victims of violence. Between 2009 and 2021, the homicide rate among Indigenous women and girls was six times higher than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts, Statistics Canada said in a report last year.
Canada and Manitoba on Friday announced a partnership for a Red Dress Alert system that would inform the public when an Indigenous woman or girl is reported missing. The pilot project is expected to help inform an eventual national warning system.
Darlene Okemaysim-Sicotte has been on the front lines working to end violence against Indigenous women in Saskatchewan for almost two decades. As co-chair of Iskwewuk E-wichiwitochik (Women Walking Together), she has supported many families of the missing.
Okemaysim-Sicotte says red is a color that ancestors can see, so it’s powerful to see red clothing placed in public spaces across the country.
But, Okemaysim-Sicotte adds, it’s important for people to look beyond the dresses and look at the women they represent.
“We are doing this for the missing people and we must not forget them,” he says.
“They need to be remembered.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 2024.