On Red Dress Day, First Nations Call On Government To Heed Calls For Justice
May 5 marks Red Dress Day. Across the country, red dresses are hung in windows, clotheslines, and trees to recognize Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit Peoples (MMIWG2S).
Despite making up only four per cent of the total adult female population in Canada, Indigenous women make up 10 per cent of the total number of all people who have gone missing in Canada.
Of the nearly 7,000 police-reported female homicides that took place between 1980 and 2014, nearly 16 per cent of the victims were Indigenous women.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is marking the occasion by calling on the new Liberal government to urgently address the 231 Calls for Justice included in the final report of the 2019 National Inquiry Into Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.