Indigenous organization’s report moves Red Dress Alert one step closer in Manitoba

In the weeks before Tina Fontaine’s death in 2014, her great aunt, Thelma Favel, spent hours calling authorities hoping for help to find the teen, who’d disappeared into Winnipeg’s troubled streets. Too often Favel found closed doors, and officials who passed on her pleas.

“They kept hanging the phone up on Thelma, saying ‘she’s not ours, she’s not our problem,” recalled Marilyn Courchene, a longtime advocate from Sagkeeng First Nation. “She said, ‘Marilyn, I tried to get help for my Tina, but they didn’t listen.’”

In the end, Courchene said, after Tina’s body was found, it was community that lifted up her family, and community that surged together demanding justice. That groundswell eventually helped spur the 2016 National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and drive other key changes.

“A lot of answers grew out of that little girl, Tina,” Courchene said.

Now, perhaps, there is one more answer, one that looks to harness that community strength to help bring more Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks home.

On Tuesday morning, Indigenous-led organization Giganawenimaanaanig released its final report exploring the need for a Manitoba-wide Red Dress Alert. The proposed new alert would spring into action when Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people go missing, uniting families, communities and police in the crucial first hours and days.

The report, funded by the federal government, comes after nearly a year of consultation with families of victims, survivors of violence and members of impacted communities. The framework it proposes is rooted in their experiences, creating a vision that is guided by Indigenous culture and which seeks to bridge longstanding rifts between communities and police.

“We had a feeling from community members and family that, let’s move quickly, because our families and relatives need this in place now,” project chair Sandra DeLaronde said, speaking after a ceremony at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. “Now it’s about putting it on the ground and making it happen.”

Among those in attendance for the report’s release were representatives from the city, province and federal government, as well as Winnipeg Police Service Chief Gene Bowers, who voiced support for the alert, calling it “a partnership which will strengthen our capacity to serve our Indigenous communities and help us live up to” the national inquiry’s 231 calls for justice.

On a long table near the edge of the hall, photos of some of Manitoba’s missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people stood surrounded by flowers and candles. It was a heart-wrenching reminder of the stakes: with every year that passes, those images are joined by more portraits, and more names.

To develop the report, Giganawenimaanaanig — “We All Take Care of Them” in Anishinaabemowin — held 43 community engagement sessions between January and October, many of them in impacted Indigenous communities across Manitoba. They began in Sagkeeng, about 120 kilometres north of Winnipeg, which has one of the highest rates of MMIWG2S.

“What we need in this time and place is for everyone, all peoples to come together and care for one another, and make sure we don’t see another Indigenous person gone missing and murdered again,” said Sagkeeng First Nation Chief E.J. Fontaine, speaking at the report’s release.

“I know it’s a vision that we have in our community, and… this initiative to have alerts and supports available for women is going to go a long ways to helping women feel safe, feel protected and feel loved, because that’s what we need, is women to feel loved once again.”

Much of what Giganawenimaanaanig heard during those consultations dealt with a rift of trust between Indigenous people and police. Yet their consultation also showed where impacted communities are open to healing those rifts with authorities, as they look to work together make their communities safer.

For example, in an online survey of 1,000 people, just under six per cent thought police alone should determine when a Red Dress Alert is issued. Yet nearly two-thirds believed the decision should be made by a team that includes relatives, survivors and police, over options that include a team of only Indigenous staff, or a team of relatives and survivors.

Overall, families made clear, the Red Dress Alert should allow authorities, communities and families to co-ordinate and get information out in a clear and timely fashion. Above all, Giganawenimaanaanig heard, those alerts must include culturally informed supports for families, as they face the scary and stressful search for a loved one.

“We can get an alert. It’s about pressing a button, right? Sending an alert out,” DeLaronde said. “So it’s more about being able to support individuals on the ground before an alert is necessary. And I think that’s really the challenge.”

The next step, DeLaronde said, is for the province to sign on. In order to have sufficient resources and impact, the proposed alert will need to have companion legislation. With that legislation in hand, DeLaronde said, Giganawenimaanaanig expects to begin work on establishing the alert system in January, and have it fully operational by June.

Speaking to reporters at the legislature Tuesday, Premier Wab Kinew signalled his government was open to the idea.

“We’ve definitely been hearing from the group organizing the Red Dress Alert in the leadup to this,” Kinew said. “We’ve been supportive and communicating with them. The big thing is, let’s just make everyone safer in Manitoba. We’ve seen some terrible stories, very high-profile ones. And if this can help make women, girls, two-spirit people safer, let’s pursue it.”

He deferred to cabinet members Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine for further comment.

— With files from Carol Sanders

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca