Missing, murdered honoured on Red Dress Day

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This article was published 06/05/2025 (324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shirley Flett says one of the reasons she observes Red Dress Day is to honour a 16-year-old Indigenous girl who disappeared from her northern Manitoba community five years ago.

“Her name is Tammy Nattaway, and she was from Garden Hill First Nation where I’m from, an isolated community north of Winnipeg,” said Flett, now a Brandon resident.

“Everybody still thinks about her, but nobody knows where she is or what happened to her,” Flett said, as she added beads and a ribbon to a felt cutout of a red dress. “And it’s painful for her parents, who’ve never had closure.”

Flett and about a dozen other women gathered at the Women’s Resource Centre Monday afternoon for Red Dress Day, to show support for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and gender-diverse people.

The participants were invited to dip one of their hands in red paint and place it on a poster board and adorn a red dress cutout with beads, ribbons or paint.

Audrey Daniels said she loves what the Women’s Resource Centre offers to the community and believed it was important to show her support.

“I’m here mostly to honour missing children and people from Indian residential schools. There are a lot of reasons. But it kind of hurts talking about it, so I’ll just keep creating,” Daniels said as she finished a red dress covered with beads.

Season Clyne was wearing a red dress during the event. She placed her handprint on the poster as a show of support for “all those missing and murdered — they all are important,” she said.

“My mom is from Norway House Cree Nation, so I understand the impact it has on our people.”

Looking around the room, she added, “It’s one of my favourite places to come and gather with all the women who I know who are vulnerable and struggling in our community.”

It’s important to provide a safe space for the women to gather any day of the week, but Red Dress Day “stands out as significant,” said Leanne Bone, the centre’s Indigenous program co-ordinator.

“We have a community of women who come here and lean on each other because it’s a safe place,” said Bone.

“So, on this day we honour the ones who have passed on, but we also hope that we’re bringing awareness for the future so we can keep even more women, girls, two-spirit and gender-diverse people safe.”

The first Red Dress Day was held May 5, 2010, and was inspired by Red River Métis artist Jaime Black, who created an installation in 2009 called The REDress project, which consisted of hundreds of red dresses hanging in public spaces like trees and lampposts as visual reminders of the number of Indigenous women who have been killed or are missing.

In 2011, red dresses were featured at installations at the Manitoba legislature and the University of Winnipeg, and in the 24 years since, the day has been observed across Canada and around the world.

May 5 was the birthday of Lisa Marie Young, a 21-year-old Tla-o-qui-aht woman who disappeared under suspicious circumstances from Nanaimo, B.C., on Canada Day 2002.

Homicide rates for Indigenous women and girls are six times higher than any other group of people in the country, according to data released by Statistics Canada in 2023.

Between 2009 and 2021, 490 Indigenous women and girls were the victims of homicide across the country. Additionally, data from 2015 to 2021 shows of all the unsolved homicides, 32 per cent of the cases involved a victim who had been reported missing at the time of her death.

Prior to the event at the Women’s Resource Centre, a community feast was held at Princess Park to end two days of commemorating Red Dress Day. The feast was hosted by Brandon Indigenous Cultural Celebrations, a collective of Indigenous community members.

It was a meaningful event, said Brandon police Chief Tyler Bates, who added he “stopped in” to pay his respects and engage with the citizens who gathered in the park.

“I think the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women is something that has touched people all across our nation,” said Bates.

“There are times to mourn, there are times to grieve, and there are times to be together — to work together and look for meaningful change and meaningful impact on what is a national tragedy,” he said.

“So, that’s where I see value and importance, because I do think everything begins with relationship. And it’s really important for people who are personally affected by this tragedy to know that there is support, that police are an agency that can be trusted in terms of some of the challenges with respect to a missing, murdered or lost loved one.”

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