Thousands of moccasins memorialize native women
Travelling art exhibit pays tribute to the missing
— Some of the beadwork is simple: flowers or a bear’s paw, the words “love” and “hope” scrawled by a child’s hand.
Some is more intricate: a picture of an aboriginal woman, yellow embroidered police tape scrolling down the bottom, or half a woman’s face with a label saying, “Hello My Name Is: Who Cares.”
They are just some of the 1,726 pairs of moccasin tops that make up Walking With Our Sisters, a travelling art exhibition to pay tribute to hundreds of aboriginal women who have been reported missing or murdered over the past 20 years.
“They are just the tops, so they are intentionally not sewn into the moccasins to reflect the unfinished lives of the women, and the loss of potential, and the loss of the next generations that they would be a part of,” said Métis artist Christi Belcourt, who put together the exhibition.
Belcourt came up with the idea after repeatedly seeing posters of missing girls and women made her feel helpless. She put a request out for donations of moccasin tops, or vamps, on social media and was amazed by the response.
“It turned out a great number of people feel exactly the same way I do,” she said Friday as the exhibition opened in Winnipeg at the start of a seven-year tour of North America.
“I was getting 100 packages a day from the post office and it was very overwhelming.”
The designs and messages on the tombstone-shaped vamps range from floral patterns and animals to heart-wrenching epitaphs. One vamp depicts a beaded Ottawa police badge. Another simply says, “Mother, Sister, Friend, Daughter.”
Still another shows an empty place setting with the words, “Clearing the table, her mom would hold the empty plate to her lips. A silent prayer for her daughter’s return.”
The definitive number isn’t known, but the Native Women’s Association of Canada estimated in 2010 that 582 aboriginal women had been reported missing or murdered across Canada. More recent research puts that total at 824.
Although many have called for a national inquiry, the federal government has rejected the idea.
The exhibition’s focus is on honouring those who have been lost, Belcourt said. Families who have lost a sister, mother, grandmother or aunt need more support, she said.
The exhibition is scheduled to make stops in Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan this year before going to the United States and Ottawa.