Over 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women were given a voice at Carleton Sept. 21 in a panel discussion entitled, “Families of Sisters in Spirit — Why Missing?”    

As part of No Means No Week, an annual campaign on campus to end sexual and gender-based violence, the panel featured several aboriginal activists who discussed both their personal stories and their work to end violence against aboriginal women.

In 2005, a government program called Sisters in Spirit was created to research and document the cases of over 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.

“[Sisters in Spirit] was really groundbreaking. It was becoming an internationally known initiative,” said Kristen Gilchrist, a Carleton PhD student in sociology who was one of the panelists.

In 2010, funding for the program was discontinued.

So Gilchrist said she decided to continue the work herself. Along with aboriginal activist Bridget Tolley, whose mother was killed by a Quebec provincial police car in 2001, Gilchrist co-founded “Families of Sisters in Spirit” in January 2011.

“With the policy work ending, we decided let’s just do it on our own. We aren’t constrained by government. We’re not afraid of funding because we don’t have any,” Gilchrist said following the panel discussion.

The grassroots work has been very successful, she added.

“We don’t have the funding that a government program might have, but we’re getting a lot more done than we could have under government constraints,” she said. “We’re happy to pick up the pieces of [Sisters in Spirit] and keep the legacy of that work going, and in a way that the families get to lead and not the government.”

Gilchrist wasn’t the only panelist who has been working to end violence against aboriginal women.

Another panelist, Gladys Radek, lost her niece Tamara along the “Highway of Tears,” a stretch of highway in British Columbia where over 30 women have gone missing, most of them aboriginal.

“When Tamara went missing, I took it upon myself to find out what happened . . . soon I found out that it wasn’t just Tamara that had gone missing,” Radek said during the discussion.

“We were tired of hearing from the families who have not gotten any answers when their loved ones went missing, whether [from] the police and justice system or [from] the government,” she said.   

Frustrated, Radek formed the Walk4Justice in 2008 to raise awareness, walking 4,000 kilometres from Vancouver to Ottawa. Radek just completed her fourth Walk4Justice Sept. 19.

No Means No Week, an event that started over a decade ago, is a campaign run by the Womyn’s Centre and Foot Patrol.

The week seeks to raise awareness and educate students on sexual and gender based violence through an array of workshops and panel discussions, according to Womyn’s Centre co-ordinator Kandace Price.

Price said a panel that discussed violence against aboriginal women was an important inclusion into the week.

“If we’re going to look at ending sexual and gender based violence on our campus, we should look at one of the most marginalized groups in the country,” she said.

– with files from Cassie Aylward