Social Media Campaign asks horrifying question
- Jeanelle Mandes | October 14, 2014
The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women has been gaining a lot of attention through social media. The hashtag #AmINext went viral with people posting pictures of themselves using the social media campaign written on paper on Twitter and Facebook.
The creator of the social media campaign, Holly Jarrett, says she came up with the idea after her cousin Loretta Saunders was murdered. Saunders was a university student at St. Mary’s in Halifax who was writing a thesis on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
This is one of the reasons that pushed Jarrett into raising attention to the need of a national inquiring from the Canadian government.
“I started a petition on Change.org to call a national public inquiry. I didn’t think I was going to get that much of a response...overnight I literally had six to seven thousand signatures on that petition,” says Jarrett. “I wanted to do something for ...I was on the internet and I seen the words ‘Am I Next’ in big black bold letters and that stood right out to me. I thought that’s it, that’s what I need to do,” she adds.
Since then, the social media campaign went viral catching a lot of people’s attention including Alicia Bellegarde. Bellegarde believes the campaign will help open people’s eyes about the truth and reality of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.
“When I seen all the signs popping up on different social media sites, it makes me think could I be next?” says Bellegarde, a First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) student. “There’s times when I walk to my car by myself at night and I question if I’m safe. I have that fear what if it comes to reality that I’m next. It brings fear,” Bellegarde adds.
Chasity Delorme, FNUniv Student Association President, says the campaign is definitely spreading awareness and attention to the issue.
“It’s getting out there to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and that’s the key is educating any population very important social issues such as this,” she says.
Delorme has always been involved in raising awareness to social justice issues in her community. She created the social media hash tag #notyourstereotype campaign in response to social media pictures of the University of Regina cheer team posing as Cowboys and Indians.
“Social media is a great tool to create awareness on important issues. I’ve utilized the same social media tool in the past to create awareness in regards to stereotyping which is my personal connection to #AmINext hash tag campaign,” says Delorme. “In my views, Aboriginals are portrayed in a very negative way...there are still negative stereotyping out there,” she adds.
Delorme encouraged Aboriginal people through social media to take pictures of themselves with the hash tag she came up with. “I wanted to make a statement to the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community so they can see what Aboriginal people look like in modern day society and it’s not the way it’s being portrayed,” she adds.
Delorme says that any sort of social media tools are important in getting the message out there. Throughout Facebook, a lot of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have changed their profile pictures to an empty picture in support of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Some people have used the #ImNotNext hash tag which demonstrates strong and empowered Aboriginal women who are empowering themselves in a different way.
“Some of the girls from the grassroots organizations are saying [#AmINext hash tag] is too colonial and that we’re allowing ourselves to look like victims,” says Jarrett explaining the different social media campaigns aside from hers. “My campaign is saying that I’m afraid and it’s probably because it happened to my little cousin,” she adds.
Jarrett says the difference between all the social media campaigns are the names. In the end, all campaigns want the same thing; a national public inquiry for Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.
According to a RCMP report released early this year, there are 1,181 missing and murdered Aboriginal women police-recorded.