Liverpool Regional High School is doing their part to honour missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
Student Kinsey Francis, with the help of teacher Amanda Fisher, took the lead in organizing a Red Dress event, following similar events across South Shore schools.
Francis, who is Mi’kmaw, didn’t want to do a formal presentation, saying she wanted people to think about the people behind the statistics.
“I wanted people to be able to go in and reflect and take it upon themselves to think about what is happening,” she says.
Francis booked Pine Grove Park and people will be asked to walk through a red dress display in silent reflection and then gather by the water for drumming, tea, and a smudging.
“I could tell you over and over again the statistics of this, but are you going to remember that, more so if I were to put you in the woods with red dresses and you sit there and think about how those red dresses represent a woman who is no longer here?” she asks.
The project was not only important to Francis as a student, but as a member of Acadia First Nation as well.
Francis says she wanted to make sure she highlighted the Mi’kmaq community as much as she could for their red dress event.
She spent a lot of time researching Nova Scotian missing or murdered indigenous women and selected several women and girls of varying ages to highlight in the display.
Francis says she’s anxious for the public to see the display but particularly for Acadia First Nation’s elders to see it.
“I’m excited for that portion,” she says.
Liverpool Regional High School classes will go through at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, while the public is invited for 11 a.m.
Following that, the elders will have their own walk through.
The REDress Project was started in 2011 as an art installation to draw attention to missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.