Thousands of people gathered in communities across British Columbia on Friday to call for justice and remember lost loved ones, in the annual Women’s Memorial March.
It’s the 34th year that families, friends and activists have spent Feb. 14 marching in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, but many say little has changed.
“I worked 35 years down here. I had a daughter who was stabbed multiple times in the stomach, the guy bit off her ear, gave her a hairline fracture and she was on life support. The guy didn’t get charged,” said Carol Martin, one of the organizers of the Vancouver event.
“I think the justice system really needs to look at how they deal with the victims and the people who either damage, kill or maim our women.”
Large crowds marched through the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood where far too many have gone missing.
The march stopped multiple times to mark the last known locations of women who had disappeared.
A concurrent march made its way through the streets of Surrey, where the message was the same.
“We’re here today to honour our sisters that went missing, and also for everybody — my son was murdered in Edmonton in 2009, there’s still no justice for him. I’m marching for him today,” said Deana McDonald.
“There is no justice, because you know we are still going missing. And we are targeted.”
Hundreds also gathered in Prince George, the terminus of Northern B.C.’s notorious “Highway of Tears.”
The RCMP acknowledges at least 18 people who vanished or were murdered along Highway 16, more than half of them Indigenous, but critics believe the number is far higher.
“Action is what’s needed,” said Julie Daum with Carrier Sekani Family Services.
“We need people to not just care, but take action. And remember that love is not just a noun, it’s a verb.”
In 2019, a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls concluded the tragedy stemmed from a “persistent and deliberate pattern of systemic racial and gendered human and Indigenous-rights violations and abuses, perpetuated historically and maintained today by the Canadian state.”
Report author, former B.C. judge Marion Buller, used the word “genocide” to describe violence against Indigenous women and girls, and made more than 200 calls for justice aimed at multiple levels of government.
As of last summer, according to a review by the Assembly of First Nations, just two of those calls for justice have been fully implemented.