BSA: 18th Annual Strawberry Ceremony
This upcoming Tuesday, February 14th, cities across the nation will gather for the annual Women's Memorial March and/or Strawberry Ceremony.
This event began as memorial march in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in 1992, after the unjust murder of a woman on Powell St., raising awareness for the ongoing inequities experienced by women in the Downtown Eastside.
Since, cities across Canada have developed their own marches and ceremonies, expanding the day to honour the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, as well as more broadly the systemic inequities of gender-based violence, poverty, racism, and colonialism which disproportionately affect women and gender-diverse folk.
“On February 14th we come together in solidarity with the women who started this vigil over 20 years ago in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, and with the marches and rallies that will be taking place across this land.
We stand in defense of our lives and to demonstrate against the complicity of the state in the ongoing genocide of Indigenous women and the impunity of state institutions and actors (police, RCMP, coroners’ offices, the courts, and an indifferent federal government that prevents justice for all Indigenous peoples.”
The Strawberry Ceremony, which will be hosted in Toronto on Feb 14th, is a ceremony held to honour and call attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Strawberries mean ode’min in the Ojibway language, and ode means heart.
Stawberries are distributed to members of the ceremony, and the cut-open strawberry resembles a heart. After a prayer, the stawberries were consumed in memory of all wrongfully missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Three Steps to Take Action:
Visit the Facebook event for the Toronto ceremony, which will be held outside police headquarters at 40 College Street—or find the community events taking place in your area!
Share this post and invite three friends to this week's bite-sized advocacy community challenge.
Read the Calls to Justice from the MMIWG2S report
Rates of violence against Indigenous women are much higher than for non-Indigenous women in Canada, even when all other differentiating factors are accounted for.
The rate of murder of Indigenous women (3.64 per 100,000) was almost 6 times higher than non-Indigenous women (0.65 per 100,000), as of 2014.
Only 53% of murder cases in Native Women's Association's database has been solved (versus 84% of all murder cases nationally)
6 out of 10 cases of violent crime against Indigenous people are estimated to go unreported.
Ben and Jerry's love making ice cream—but using their business to make the world a better place gives their work its meaning. They are guided by their Core Values and seek to make change at every level of business, whether it has to do with their ice cream or with their advocacy work.
Core Values:
Advance human rights and dignity
Support social and economic justice for historically marginalized communities
Protect and restore the Earth's natural systems.
In other words: they try to use ice cream to change the world - and honestly, that sounds delicious.
OCP's Agent of Change program is comprised of carefully vetted value aligned organizations that support On Canada Project's mission to create accessible conversations while allowing us to retain 100% of our editorial control.
