School in Selkirk, Man., crafts display of nearly 2,000 faceless dolls for upcoming Red Dress Day

Red dresses are typically used to honour and re‐ member missing and mur‐ dered Indigenous women and girls, but a high school in Selkirk, Man., is bringing awareness in a different way.

A display of nearly 2,000 faceless dolls was created by Lord Selkirk Regional Com‐ prehensive Secondary School students ahead of Sunday's Red Dress Day, the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and TwoSpirit People.

Mackenzie Serger, an In‐ digenous student in Grade 11 who helped make the dolls and set up the display, says it's good to see Indigenous representation at her school through the dolls.

"It was really nice, and it was kind of touching, be‐ cause I know a lot of the school is Indigenous," she told CBC.

Some of Serger's family members are residential school survivors, and there are other students who have relatives who have disap‐ peared.

"It's just really nice to see the fact that some of those people can be represented through these dolls we made in the school."

Caroline Oth, a Grade 10 student originally from Ger‐ many who has been in Win‐ nipeg since September, says she hopes awareness of MMIWG can help prevent more women from going missing.

"It's important that people are reminded of what hap‐ pened in the past," she said.

The school's textile arts class prepared the dolls, as well as hair and clothing for them, before distributing the materials to other classes, Oth said.

There are plans to make the display permanent rather than an annual event, said Caitlin Schick, a human ecology teacher at Lord Selkirk Secondary School.

'We need to have this conversation'

"We need to have this con‐ versation all the time, and we need to bring awareness," Schick said.

"I think a lot of our stu‐ dents might have missing rel‐ atives, and sometimes they go unnoticed."

The process of putting to‐ gether the display was a con‐ versation starter, Schick said.

"Some of them have red dresses, some of them have red handprints over their mouths," she said.

"A lot of them wanted to be colourful and commemo‐ rate the women who went missing and think about what kind of hair they had did they have grey hair? Were they older or younger? What did they wear when they went missing?"