Christi Belcourt walks alongside the moccasin vamps on her way down to the river. (Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Walking With Our Sisters

Commemoration for missing and murdered comes to Batoche

Aug 15, 2019 | 3:28 PM

The East Village at the Batoche National Historic Site is hosting an important event over the next four days.

Walking With Our Sisters is an artistic commemoration which aims to honour missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. The commemoration consists of over 2,000 moccasin vamps or tops that have been made and submitted by people from all over Canada.

Christi Belcourt, one of the organizers for the artistic commemoration, which is made up of elders and the River Woman Collective, said in putting together and displaying the moccasin vamps organizers have a very specific goal in mind.

“I suppose if you could call it an inspiration, for this installation is simply to honour the lives of the women and girls whose lives were cut short,” she said.

Organizers chose to display vamps as they’re only part of a moccasin and they represent the unfinished lives of those who have passed on.

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The setup at the East Village at Batoche has the vamps sitting on a red carpet which travels down a path before ending on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River.

“We are on Métis lands here, we’re at the site, a historic site of great significance to our people, it’s the site of the battle of Batoche, Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel walked these grounds, they fought for our lands,” she said.

Along with the deep historical connections, Belcourt said in the 1950s a Métis woman was found dead along the banks of the river where the commemoration ends.

Belcourt said she hopes people who see the display think about the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and understand the country needs to undergo a reckoning.

“I want non-native people to open their hearts and ask themselves how would they feel, if this was their sisters or their brothers, their mothers, their daughters, their sons. How would they feel if this was happening in their communities,” she said.

Belcourt added she saw the commemoration have a major effect on people who have come out to see it as it was making its way around the country. One instance which stood out to her was an older man in Winnipeg who cried.

“He says ‘I just never knew, I just never knew,’” she said.

This will be the last time the commemoration will be on display. After Sunday some of the vamps will be burned on a sacred fire while others will be mailed back to those who made them. Belcourt said some of the vamps will go home with her to Ontario as organizers seek to get in touch with the people who made them to find out about their wishes.

Since the commemoration was put together seven years ago, it has travelled all over Canada. The only places it was not able to visit were Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nunavut. Belcourt said the project would not have been able to go forward without people supporting it by sending in vamps and helping with set up.

“Their work made this possible and the work of all the people, the volunteers, there’s been thousands of volunteers as well over the course of the seven years,” she said.

Angela Rancourt, who is with the River Women Collective which is made up of women from communities along the South Saskatchewan River said working on the commemoration has helped bring the group closer together and also helped the group to build skills.

“It’s been a really good teaching for all of us,” she said.

(Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@mjhskcdn