The Missing Women Conference took place last week. I was only able to attend the Friday morning session, but I heard powerful and sorrowful stories. My friend Suzanne attended the entire conference and found it an empowering experience. Click on the link above for more information, but I’m pasteing the conference backgrounder below:
Conference Background
From the northern border city of Juárez, Chihuahua to the west and east coasts of Canada, Indigenous girls and women are at far higher risk to be kidnapped, sexually abused or raped, and murdered.
According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Sisters in Spirit initiative, there are more than 500 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. In Mexico, thousands of women have disappeared and hundreds of women have been killed in Juárez since the early 1990s. This violence is now spreading throughout the country, leaving a trail of grief and trauma in its wake.
The conference “Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms, and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico” examines the consistent and alarming rise of missing Indigenous women throughout both countries.
Deemed feminicide, a phenomenon that has been described as “gender extermination”, the taking of Indigenous women reveals a violence spurred by sexualized racism thereby tracing the legacy of colonization.
While the conference provides a forum to examine this violence, it also maps a path to justice
I am deeply concerned about First Nations and Metis issues, but am unsure how it is God is calling me to be involved in justice seeking initiatives. In my most recent sermon I preached about being “haunted” by the Holy Spirit on a select few issues that I believe will become the focus of my ministry – in what is yet an unclear vision.
I am haunted by the disappearance of Tamra Keepness. This link will take you to a CBC website. I was going to include the photo of this little girl, but even that is too painful. She has been missing from her Regina home for four years. I pray.