`That march literally saved my life'
Indigenous woman overcomes suffering to help others heal with red ribbon skirts
Jamie Smallboy was passed out in an alleyway on the Downtown Eastside, dopesick, hungover and homeless. The sound of drumming, like a heartbeat, woke her up.
Smallboy got up and followed the sound. “I turned the corner and there were hundreds of Indigenous women and non-Indigenous supporters marching.”
Smallboy was flooded with emotion. Growing up in Treaty Six territory in Alberta, before she was apprehended by social services and removed from her family at the age of 11, ceremony had been a huge part of her life.
Smallboy asked the marchers why they were drumming and singing. “They said it was for the missing and murdered Indigenous women.”
Her tears began to flow — she was one of the missing. Smallboy had lost custody of her five young children, and driven by despair and addiction, was living on the streets, so disconnected from services or supports that she huddled in shopping carts at night, and covered herself in cardboard to stay warm.
“That march literally saved my life,” said Smallboy, who reached out to the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre for help shortly after that day in 2011.
The journey wasn't easy, but the Langara College student, now 50, has been drug-free and sober for nine years.
“I was homeless because my kids were in care and I had given up hope. I was consumed by alcohol and addictions.”
Smallboy is now sharing her story, like a drum she hopes others will hear. “I never knew someone as broken as me could come back and heal.”
Smallboy is the founder of Red Sisters Gathering, a small, grassroots project to create red ribbon skirts for the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, which she will distribute at the 29th annual Women's Memorial March, taking place on Feb. 14.
Smallboy founded Red Sisters Gathering in 2019 with two Langara classmates, Holly Desjarlais and Michelle Paquette, to make a space for marginalized and homeless women to participate in the creation of the vivid red skirts that will be donated to families of victims at the march.
“The Red Sisters Gathering is for those women who don't have email addresses, don't have phone numbers,” said Smallboy, who said she hopes to raise funds to purchase fabric, donated or loaned sewing machines, and coffee and doughnuts for the socially distanced sewing gatherings.
The gatherings are more than just sewing circles. “It's ceremony, and the welcoming of women back home in our culture, and ceremonial circles. Our ceremonial circles revitalized my pride as a woman and lifegiver, and the ceremonial skirts we are making are part of that healing,” said Smallboy.
Smallboy, who is Cree, said, “The colour red is believed to be the only thing a spirit sees. I would like to give red ribbon skirts to the families so the spirits of their loved ones will see a braid of women in red, and the victims will come and march with their loved ones.”
Each stitch in the ribbon skirts binds her more closely with her culture.
When Smallboy aged out of the foster care system in Alberta and returned to her family in Maskwacis, Alta., she felt like she didn't belong anymore. “All my friends had grown up together, they had bonded, they had danced powwow together. I was a stranger.”
In 2009, Smallboy moved to Vancouver to try to get away from her physically abusive husband. “I didn't want my kids to grow up like that,” she said. But she struggled, and eventually all five of her children were apprehended.
“I had no idea what trauma was, or what intergenerational trauma was,” said Smallboy. “I didn't know I had rights, I didn't know I was an abused woman, or that I had PTSD. I was ignorant about the facts of residential school and the impact of culture being taken from us.
“I never knew a person could be that broken and come back to where I am now. I have my kids back, I'm clean and sober, I'm in school,” said Smallboy, whose kids, ranging in age from 10 to 18, all live with her. “Now I want to give back and help others.”
It's a project she intends to tackle one ribbon skirt at a time.
Anyone who wishes to help can contact Smallboy at: redsistersgathering@gmail.com