Indigenous mom has personal stake in missing and murdered women cause

By Lethbridge Herald on November 15, 2025.

Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A woman whose daughter’s body was found dismembered is walking thousands of kilometres to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

According to Statistics Canada, between 2009-2021 Indigenous women represented between five to seven per cent of all homicide victims, while only representing two-three per cent of the population.

Stephanie English lost two of her daughters within a year of each other.

Joey English, one of her daughters, was reported missing on June 9, 2016 and later parts of her body were found in Crescent Heights Park in Calgary. It was later determined that she had died from an overdose, and someone had dismembered her body after her death.

English says her people, of all ages, are experiencing abuse in silence due to fear of what speaking out could do to them.

“There’s a lot of stories a lot of people don’t talk about because of the fear.”

To help raise awareness, English, along with six other family members, are participating in a four-part walk, run, ride journey and completed the second leg last week.

The first part of the journey was from Ottawa to Piikani, the second they traveled from the Carway U.S. border to the Legislature in Edmonton, the third leg will be a walk from Vancouver to Piikani and the final leg will be from Fort McKay to Piikani.

English says the murder of her people is more complex than just the crime itself. It includes the foster care system, where the children grow up not learning about their culture.

“The foster care system is really brainwashing our children to where they don’t even know the roots of who they are.”

She adds that some of these children in care grow up facing abuse and neglect by a system that is supposed to be taking care of them.

“When the system puts our children in that vulnerable state of being protected, they’re not being protected-they’re being abused…because it’s all about the money in the foster cares, and I’m not saying all of them, I’m saying some.”

English says physicians and psychiatrists need to be trauma informed, as many kids in care are given medications to deal with behaviours which stem from trauma, something with which she has personal experience.

“I asked the foster care for help; they took my children away and they put them on medication and to this day I lost two of my daughters and two of my sons are mentally broken because of the medication.”

Due to the trauma, grief and loss they face, English says many of her people turn to addiction, isolation and suicide to deal with the pain. She believes the biggest change that needs to take place is teaching children the true history of Canada and what happened to the Indigenous people.

“They need to change the textbooks, they need to write the truth of what really happened to our people, and not just sugar coat it.”

English also believes changes need to be made in the justice system, as many of the people who are harming Indigenous women are not being held accountable, including the man who dismembered her daughter.

“The guy got less than 18 months and he did less than six months in jail, and again, he was let out on the street to continue doing what he was doing to our women.”

Even with her heartbreaking past, and still dealing with the anguish of not knowing where her daughters limbs are, English has chosen to create a community to help bring awareness and hopes one day it will bridge the gaps of understanding.

She hopes that her steps will create ripples across the nation and across the globe as well, but above all she has found peace and healing by connecting with Mother Earth.

“I always listen to the wise words of this one elder, he says, ‘wherever you walk Mother Eearth and wherever you lay your head down, that is home,’ and in that, part of me really rested, because I didn’t know where I belonged, where I sat, where I fit after I lost my daughters.”