... and the Evils They Face
Remembering the Vanished
BY MILLIE KNAPP M
Display of moccasin vamps, or tongues, beaded in remembrance of Canada’s missing aborigine women. According to the organizing group Walking With Our Sisters, “The tops of moccasins are intentionally not sewn into moccasins, and represent the unfinished lives of murdered or missing Indigenous women, exhibited on a pathway to represent their path or journey that was ended prematurely. As the artists created these works, many prayed and put their love into their stitching." This group was beaded by women of the Kahnawake Reserve.
36 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2015
aisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander were last seen together at a high school dance in Maniwaki, Que., in September 2008, according to
Maisy’s mother, Laurie Odjick (Anishinaabe). “I can’t say what happened because not
much is known about her disappearance,” says Odjick about her daughter, Maisy, who has been missing since the dance. “Most of what I am all about is getting justice for my daughter. The way the case was handled is unjust for her,” says Odjick at her home on Paganakomin Mikan in the Kitigan Zibi com- munity of Quebec. Odjick reported to the Kitigan Zibi Police
Department that the teenagers were missing, but the police filed the girls as runaways so the department was very slow to move. “An Amber Alert should have been issued
but nothing like that was done for them so we did it as a family,” says Odjick. “We did our own searches as a family. Friends helped. That was something that wasn’t done by the police either. We went searching the areas they were last seen. I went on the river with some friends on their boat. We didn’t know what we were going to find there, but we did it anyway because it was something that needed to be done.” Maisy and Shannon’s cases are part of a national crisis in Canada called Missing and
Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Groups like the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have conducted re- search about the plight. The Sisters in Spirit campaign was founded
by NWAC in 2004 on the belief that “over the past 20 years, approximately 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing in communities across Canada. Yet government, the media and Canadian society continue to remain silent.” “I think some communities sweep [vio-
lence against women] under the rug because they don’t want to believe it happened in their community,” says Odjick. “It’s our families that are living through that. We are the ones who bring awareness. There are community members who support that and communities themselves who support it, but for a while, there was nothing about our missing and murdered women out there except us families on Parliament Hill.” After five years of research, 582 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and
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PHOTO COURTESY OF WALKING WITH OUR SISTERS
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