The Ghost in the Red Dress

Every year at Western University in London, Canada we do the Red Dress awareness campaign of hanging pretty red dresses all over the campus. Indigenous female volunteers constructed the dresses. For me, these red dresses represent a time in a young woman's life when their youthful beauty enhances their outgoingness, social acceptance, and themselves generally being the centre of attention. This year's campaign involved placing the dresses outside, on coat hangers from tree limbs. When I saw the first of several, I noticed each dress had a weatherproofed individualized photocopy of the girl or woman murdered or missing. Emotionally I could feel the contrast between an exciting life full of hope and the cancellation of that hope through horrible tragedy. Her innocent hope in looking beautiful was to escape from her misogynist, femicide tortures in her life.

Today's Indigenous children are the product of more than a century of residential school intervention(s) and interference in their lives. Horrific treatment involving corporal punishment(s) and forced sexual slavery were enforced the children's entire time at the residential school. The narrative or philosophy of care in the residential schools was a prisoner of war (POW) model. To place some context in this there were no pre-existing models or people experienced in the care of children. As child prisoners, the children suffered sexual abuse, beatings and depravation(s) from their kin. If there were any problems with the children or families the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) enforced discipline, harshly. The long-term damaging or multi-generational damage was caused by children being brought up to know hatred and disappointment instead of love and security. Sexual interference also introduced broken family values and trust relationship issues, which negatively affected successive generations.

When the children finally graduated and were sent home [if they even knew where that was], they were often received with a cold shoulder because they could not communicate in their own language, culture or religion. Also the children [now young adults] because of sexual interference, and institutional violence were unable to form healthy relationships with either their kin or in the settler community. These graduates were always on the edge of both cultures, but not in either. The children from the residential school system did not have the advantage of witnessing a healthy family in either the settler culture or their own culture. What the children did learn was POW or jail mentality. In modern psychology, we know that when any child is removed from their home environment their chances of success in life are far less. If these residential school graduates tried to get a job, they were not accepted within the white colonial community.

As beautiful as the young women was in her red dress, there were many obstacles in her way. If she called the police, priest or a social worker they would not help her because of systemic racism. Any complaints against men made by her would be tokenized or outright dismissed. The police are more likely to rape an Indigenous woman and then drop her off in the wilderness to walk home.

A few days later, back on Western campus, one dress had fallen to the ground with the wind and snow, and it was covered with slush and mud. The dress had fallen just a inches of the main sidewalk. Thousands of students, staff, visitors had walked by it [including myself, several times]. I then noticed a little puff where some decaying gasses had accumulated under the dress. I thought--- "that is creepy." Then it clicked, and this was a revelation to me--- "Is history repeating itself?" As terrible as this thought was, this is how this tragedy happened in real life. Their voices were screaming and crying out for help, just to be ignored. The young woman or girl was murdered, disposed of and left on the side of the road to decay. I thought [as I had never thought before] a darker side to the Red Dress Campaign. The red dress is also the symbolic colour red for the blood shed of these innocent young women. When these young Indigenous women are deliberately not protected by law society and law enforcement, and are allowed to fall through the cracks, certain types of sexual predators become involved. These, generally male predators operated in femicide which means absolute hatred of Indigenous females to the point of rape torture and murder. When I think of the red dress now I think of that bright red colour, and the innocent blood-shed of generations of beautiful Indigenous femicide victims.