Powerful exhibit honours missing, murdered women
- EFN Staff | November 02, 2014
The Walking With Our Sisters art instillation is the most powerful exhibit you will see for some time. The exhibit, hosted at Wanuskewin Heritage Park, is simple. Mocassin vamps. Over 1600 of them. And each and everyone one of them was created by a family member honouring a missing or murdered Aboriginal woman.
Once you are steps in the gallery you feel the power. Grief and sorrow show through on many. Some are hopeful. Some are amazing in their intricacy and some are simple with pictures drawn on them. But as they lay on the red fabric beside each other, not one vamp is better than the other. They are all powerful and the vast amount is overwhelming.
“There have been a variety of reactions from people who see the exhibit,” said Christi Belcourt who started this all with a Facebook invite friends to make 200 moccasin vamps to honour missing and murdered women. “People are generally quiet and respectful. Mostly when people see the vamps, the sheer number of them, it hits them. The reality. You don’t have to be an indigenous person to feel that. It is an emotional reaction.”
A ceremony was held on October 27th to mark the opening of the vamps to the people. A sacred fire was lit to begin preparations to honour missing and murdered Indigenous sisters. A local group of community members have been working together for months to bring WWOS to Saskatoon. Local co-lead organizer Glenda Abbott says “this commemorative art exhibit represents the lives of beautiful women who deserve to be remembered with respect and dignity; the vamps represent the unfinished lives of the women and girls that went missing or have been murdered.”
The process has been wrapped in ceremony and protocol. There is no videotaping or taking pictures of the exhibit. Viewers are asked to remove their shoes and walk along a winding path of red cloth, which is parallel to a grey cloth on which the vamps are placed. This is how the work is viewed and how participants will be ‘walking with our sisters’. The exhibit also features an audio soundtrack of over 60 songs submitted by approximately 30 artists. Over 100 boxes of tissue have been donated and they will certainly be used once people see the children’s vamps inside the teepee.
“I was taught that if you were beading and not in a good mood, you were supposed to put your beading away till you felt better,” said Belcourt. “Then I got letters with the vamps from all over saying the same thing. We impart our energy into things. And other people who see the exhibit feel that energy. When you go into the room, you feel all that energy from those vamps. You feel the love. The remembering.”
One aspect that Belcourt wanted the exhibit to do was to create dialogue and bring awareness to the issue. With 8 stops so far and bookings into 2019 across North America, that has certainly been accomplished. “I already know that the amount of care and love out there for our sisters is touching everyone. This gives them families that outlet to show how much they care,” she added. “I recognize that the grandmothers have a plan. In terms of the opportunity this is creating for dialogue is all part of it. Whatever this is going to be, it is. Our focus is always on the families. And if we can provide that brief moment of comfort, we have done our job.”
Volunteers are still welcome and there will be a shuttle service provided to Wanuskewin. Schedule details can be found on Facebook at “Walking with Our Sisters – Saskatoon”.
From October 31 to November 21, 2014, WWOS will be open and free for the public to attend at the Wanuskewin Heritage Park. Please visit http://www.wanuskewin.com/ for gallery hours.
To learn more visit, walkingwithoursisters.ca, or follow Walking with Our Sisters - Saskatoon on Facebook or Twitter @WWOSSaskatoon and @WWOS1.