Annual Vancouver Women’s Memorial March honours MMIWG2S+

The 33rd annual Women’s Memorial March will run through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Wednesday.

Held on Valentine’s Day, the march occurs in cities across Canada every year in honour of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG2S+). 

The march will include a gathering of victims’ family members and feature speeches from activists, and culminate in a healing circle at Oppenheimer Park in the afternoon and a community feast in the evening. 

Organizers say the march was founded in 1992 after the murder of Cheryl Ann Joe, a shíshálh Nation woman who was found dead on Powell Street, saying the situation on the Downtown Eastside has yet to change even after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 

In a statement, Shianne Ewenin, a women’s counsellor and manager of Indigenous programs at the Battered Women’s Support Services, shares that the annual march is a personal one, as Indigenous women “feel the weight of systemic, racial and gender-based violence in our lives and in the lives of our relatives. The women who are missing and murdered are not just statistics, they are our sisters, cousins, aunties, mothers, friends, and beyond.”

“I march because our stolen sisters are never forgotten, they are loved and we keep their memories alive. I march to make sure that these injustices remain visible and to demand accountability from our governments and the systems that hold these structures of violence in place,” Ewenin shared.

“I march to prevent the continuation of violence to Indigenous women, girls and two spirit peoples. I march because the violence on Indigenous women’s bodies is directly connected to the violence on the land and this needs to end.”

Main Street between Cordova and East Pender streets is closed from 8:30 a.m. with East Hastings Street closed between Gore Avenue and Columbia Street. Stay with The Leader Spirit 1130 for traffic updates every 10 minutes on the ones.

Family and community members are invited to join the gathering at 10:30 a.m., with the open-to-public march set to begin around 12 p.m.