Red Dress Day observed locally

Trilogy Recovery Community and College Place Prevention Coalition (CPPC) joined YWCA this April and May in our community’s REDress Project.

Jaime Black started the REDress project in 2010 to represent missing Indigenous women and girls. Her first exhibition was in a museum in Winnipeg. (Photos on the Métis artist’s website show several of these powerful images.)

AWARENESS IS A START
April, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, is a time to address the community issue and campus issue of sexual violence.

But the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW) in the US and Canada reminds us that violence is also an intersectional issue.

That is, when social problems like violence and marginalization overlap, the harm is amplified.

In the US, Native American women are estimated to be more than twice as likely to experience violence as other groups. One in three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her lifetime, with 67 percent of the assaults made by non-Native perpetrators. On some reservations, in fact, Native women are killed at 10 times the national average.

PARTNERS JOIN YWCA
Lucinda Victorio
, a School Recovery Support Ally & Advocate with Trilogy Recovery Community, worked with CPPC to spotlight Indigenous women lost in Washington state and create posters about their stories. These women have disappeared from their communities, some killed and some still missing.

Thank you to all the community members who displayed Red Dress yard signs about the project, displayed or donated red dresses, or shared a photo with the hashtag #MMIW.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?