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SHOOTING GALLERY: 22nd Annual Downtown Eastside Women’s Memorial March, Feb 14th 2013

All Photos: Scott Alexander

Official Website

“Their Spirits Live Within Us”: Annual Women’s Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women

In January 1991 a woman was murdered on Powell Street. Her name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. This woman’s murder in particular was the catalyst that moved women into action. Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Coast Salish Territories.

Decades later, the march continues to honour the lives of missing and murdered women. This event is organized and led by women in the DTES because women, especially Indigenous women, face physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis. The heinous and unimaginable violence that have taken the lives of so many has left a deep void in our hearts. We gather each year to mourn and remember our sisters by listening to their family members, by taking over the streets, and through spiritual ceremonies.

Increasing deaths of many vulnerable women from the DTES still leaves family, friends, loved ones, and community members with an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. Every year the list of women going missing also increases. Over 3000 women are known to have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since the 1970s. Last year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women issued this statement: “Hundreds of cases involving aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention.”

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One Response to “SHOOTING GALLERY: 22nd Annual Downtown Eastside Women’s Memorial March, Feb 14th 2013”

1. Street/Event: Annual February 14th Women’s Memorial March ‹ straightfromcamera, on February 21st, 2013 at 7:41 pm Said:

   [...] Click here to check out some more of the photos over at ABORT Magazine! [...]