Unique dolls going to Canadian senators’ offices to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
SASKATOON – Dozens of faceless dolls honouring missing and murdered will soon make their way from Saskatoon to Ottawa to live in the offices of Canada’s senators.
The dolls are made by women who attend the Saskatoon Elizabeth Fry Society sharing circle — former inmates, women at risk and other community members who want to drop in.
The Faceless Dolls project was started by the Native Women’s Association of Canada in advance of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The intent was to have groups across the country make dolls without faces to raise awareness of the crisis facing Indigenous women and girls.
The Saskatoon Elizabeth Fry Society sharing circle has been making them since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation’s Calls to Action in 2015 and the dolls line the walls at the organization’s office.
“Whether there was a story behind one of the dolls or if the women felt close to somebody or knew somebody, that’s how we honoured and we’re keeping those voices alive with the faceless dolls,” said Beverly Fullerton, facilitator for the Saskatoon Elizabeth Fry Society sharing circle.
Ontario Sen. Kim Pate, former executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, visited the Saskatoon Elizabeth Fry Society office this year and was amazed by what she saw.
Pate asked if the sharing circle participants could make a doll for her. A month later, Pate returned and asked if they could make 105 more dolls, this time for each Senator’s office, including her own since she had gifted hers to someone else.
Fullerton agreed and Pate purchased the materials needed to create the dolls.
Pate said that when she saw the dolls in Saskatoon she thought it would be a good way to remind her Senate colleagues of their work and responsibility to both represent “minority interests” and follow up on the TRC’S Calls to Action and the National Inquiry’s Calls for Justice.
For Pate, the faceless dolls represent the Indigenous women who have been murdered, gone missing, or who have “been disappeared,” not only from their homes and communities, but into the streets and prisons.
“The fact that all of the issues that contribute to why Indigenous women are more likely to go missing, to be disappeared and to be murdered are all part of the same reasons that Indigenous women represent the fastest growing number of prisoners in the country — because it’s a function of the racism, the sexism, the disadvantage they face in terms of economic circumstances — it really is a reminder of the legacy of colonization that we need to decolonize within all of our structures, particularly our legal structures,” she said.
Women who regularly met on Tuesdays for the sharing circle started to make the dolls and other women interested in the project joined in.
The dolls are now complete and waiting to be sent to Ottawa. Though that project is done, the women will continue attending the sharing circle and making faceless dolls.
“We also hope that they take some of these teachings home to their families and their children and if they start struggling, then they remember some of the stuff that we’ve done with them and hopefully that will realign them with their healing journey,” Fullerton said.