Memorial March calls for end to gender-based violence

By Lethbridge Herald on February 14, 2025.

Lillian Ironshirt sings and drums as she helps lead a small group who braved the weather for the annual WomenÕs Memorial March during the noon hour as they made their way through the downtown core. Herald photo by Ian Martens

Alexandra Noad – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

About a dozen people braved the bone chilling temperatures on Friday and gathered at city hall for a march to honour and bring awareness to missing and murdered women, girls, Two Spirit, and LGBTQIA people of Canada.

The Women’s Memorial March is held every Valentine’s Day and originated in Vancouver Eastside in response to the murder of a woman named Cheryl Ann Joe on Powell Street in 1992.

Tseten Drawu, organizer of the march, says Lethbridge has participated since 2019 to express a sense of community, compassion and caring for all women and gender diverse people.

“At present day, Indigenous women disproportionately continue to go missing or murdered with minimal to no action to address these tragedies or the systemic nature of gender-based violence, poverty, racism or colonialism.”

The group marched from city hall, through the downtown core and back to city hall, all in temperatures hovering near -20C.

Drawu says the support for this event shows that action needs to take place, that women are tired of the violence.

“In this city alone, women are getting targeted,” says Drawu. “It’s happening here, so this is a showing that it needs to stop and we hope that the community hears us and sticks up for the people that are facing violence.”

Participant Sandra Lamouche says she’s been closely impacted by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis, as her grandmother was a victim of an unsolved murder in the 1960s and her sister went missing for a period of time.

Lamouche says she didn’t receive much help from police in locating her sister and her family had to come together to locate her.

“My sister was missing for a period of time, luckily we were able to find her (but) we didn’t have much help from the RCMP and people, so we had to come together as a family.”

Lamouche believes there could be better systems in place to help prevent the imprisonment of Indigenous women.

“Looking at how do we support women, where they don’t have to end up there. Where can we support them financially and socially in all those different areas, all of those different traumas and healing that some of our women need in order to be able to live healthy lives and be successful, rather than being punished for those intergenerational impacts of colonialism.”

Over the next month residents can learn more about the Women’s Memorial March through an ArtWalk display located along the Coalbanks Trail near the Helen Schuler Nature Centre.

The exhibit features local artists’ work to honor the lives lost to gender-based violence, alongside a red dress display and information to learn about the issues and what can be done to stop violence.

The Women’s Memorial Art Walk was created in 2021 and was inspired by the REDress Project of 2010 by Jamie Black.

The ArtWalk will be displayed until March 16.