One workshop was recently held at the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) AGM in Whitehorse, YK. “Each statistic tells a story” they say, reminding everyone not to let the individual lives lost become just another number.Ĭommunity workshops workshops started in March 2012 and will continue until enough dolls are made. Each doll represents a human being taken away from family and community-strong beautiful women who became faceless victims of crime. Workshop participants put together pre-cut felt pieces (bodies, dresses, and hair in a wide variety of colors) and decorate them with feathers, beads, ribbon, etc. To make participation easy for anyone, the NWAC project uses flat felt dolls. Larocque’s original dolls were three-dimensional, requiring sewing skill and time to create. The NWAC Faceless Doll Project is a collection of handmade felt dolls created in memory of the interrupted lives of our missing mothers, daughters, and sisters across Canada. To increase public awareness of the impact of violence against women, the NWAC contacted Gloria Larocque, creator of the Aboriginal Angel Doll Project (a collection of 100 faceless dolls illustrating society’s neglect of Aboriginal women), to help develop a similar hands-on project to create a visual and physical representation of the statistic: 582 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has been gathering statistics for years, but they decided it’s time to raise awareness beyond simple numbers. Meanwhile, Morley Watson Interim Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, and David Harper, head of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, along with the federal New Democrats have been pleading with government to launch a national inquiry and find out why First Nations women are the victims of violence more than any other demographic in Canada. Police are still working to determine whether Lamb may be connected to other unsolved cases. Two of his victims were found dumped near garbage bins. In the province of Saskatchewan alone, more than 60 First Nations women have been reported missing, and Shawn Cameron Lamb, age 52, was recently arrested and charged in the deaths of three Aboriginal women in Winnipeg. Hundreds of Aboriginal women have gone missing in the past few years, and the number continues to grow. Nikki Ashton, New Democrat status of women critic, has said Canada is “facing and epidemic of murdered and missing Aboriginal women” and calls the current response by government and authorities “woefully inadequate.” During the delay, the trail grows cold and many families are still searching for answers months or years later. When a person comes forward and says my daughter is missing or my sister is missing, what happens next? Typically the initial response is to assume the child has run away or that the sister will soon return.
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