Walking with our sisters

July 24, 2013 | Young Voices
Rachel Bergen | Young Voices Co-Editor
Winnipeg, Man.

Some of the most horrifying injustices in Canada and the U.S. happened when more than 600 indigenous women went missing or were murdered in the last 20 years. The public hardly noticed or responded until it was too late.

The students of a Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) Class commemorated these acts of violence, racism, and gendered abuse during their class that ran from June 17-21. The Human Rights and Indigenous Traditions students participated in a commemorative roving art exhibit called Walking with our Sisters with their Vancouver Island University professor, Maxine Matilpi.

Alongside his classmates, 26-year-old Matthew Dueck of Charleswood Mennonite Church in Winnipeg sewed a pair of vamps with black, red, yellow, and white beads—colours of the Aboriginal traditional symbol of the medicine wheel. It’s a participatory art project where people sew decorative moccasin tops or vamps to represent standing in solidarity with the staggering number of women who are never seen again. Participants take off their shoes and walk alongside the vamps.

For Dueck, this time was dedicated to reflection.

“Being a part of this project, piecing together discussions I’ve been a part of, my involvement in the Settlers in Solidarity part of Idle No More, it’s helped to bring that all together. The Walking with our Sisters project was a time of reflection, a way to tie it all together in a way I hadn’t done before.”

It was also an opportunity for connections to be made.

Matilpi, a member of Ma’amtigila and Kwakiutl First Nations on Vancouver Island worked to empower the students to be able to wade through the complex struggles facing indigenous people rather than being bogged down by them.

By participating in the exhibit, “we felt like we were connected to a lot of people who are really deeply concerned about the human rights violations of women and girls,” she said. “I really wanted to give the students an opportunity to do something and process some of the really depressing feelings.”

Though the subject matter was heavy, the re-occurring ideas that Dueck perceived in class were safety and protection.

These are rights that the missing and murdered women didn’t always have. They are elements of a violent cycle that has spiralled out of control. They are also rights that Dueck felt thankful for as he and his classmates sewed the vamps in a safe community setting. He wanted to honour these things in his work.

“I take a lot of pride in my ability to bake and garden, but sewing wasn’t a skill I had developed. It was tough, but I wanted to sew with care, doing it in a way that’s respectful and honoured the project,” Dueck said.

Another student, Deanna Zantingh was so moved by the exhibit that she decided to do moccasin work with an Aboriginal youth camp she was going to work at, Malilpi said.

Val Smith the co-director of CSOP believes participating in Walking with our Sisters is an important way to bring the concepts of the classroom into everyday life and to actually practice peace.

“This project made visible in a powerful and important way some of the violence and injustice in our own communities here in Canada. It was a fantastic class project because it went beyond simply talking about peace and justice to acting on the ideas and theories discussed in class,” she said.

The class contributed 17 pairs to the exhibit that will kick off at the Haida Gwaii Museum in B.C. on August 23. It’s booked solid on it’s touring schedule for the next five years.

CSOP is an institute of Canadian Mennonite University. Peacebuilders from different disciplines around the world instruct different five-day classes each year for personal or professional use or academic credit. It’s also a way of networking with other peacebuilders.

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