Since 1980 over 1,000 Aboriginal women and girls in Canada have been classified as missing or murdered. Sadly, a large majority of these cases are labelled incorrectly and left unsolved. In 2014, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) report identified a total of 1,181 missing and murdered Aboriginal women (MMAW); 164 are missing, and 1,017 are homicide victims.
To raise awareness about this important issue Metis artist, Jaime Black, opened an exhibit in 2010, called The REDress Project at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. The use of over 100 red dresses in her exhibit was meant to represent the MMAW who can no longer speak for themselves. Today the Project lives on, and red dresses continue to be used across Canada as a symbol of the Aboriginal women and girls lost to violent crime, and as a call for action to prevent future loss and violence.
The poem is by Helen Knott which her aunt Connie Greyeyes originally recited at a meeting dedicated to the families of victims held by the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women, on December 9 2013.

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