The Peterborough Public Library is hosting an interactive community art installation called “The Red Dress” during the week leading up to and including the National Day of Awareness for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people (MMIWG2S+), also known as Red Dress Day.
The installation will be on display in the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Legacy Space at the library’s main branch at 345 Aylmer Street North in downtown Peterborough beginning Monday (April 28) and continuing through Red Dress Day the following Monday.
Community members are invited to participate in the installation by contributing red fabric, yarn, beading, or other textiles to help create a large, collective red dress.
“Our hope is really just that people take a moment to pause and reflect,” the library’s community engagement assistant Désirée Kretschmar told kawarthaNOW.
“Every piece of fabric added to the dress represents a life, a voice, and a shared commitment to remembering. This isn’t just about the past. The violence and loss continue today, and the conversation needs to keep going.”
In Canada, more than six in 10 Indigenous women have experienced physical or sexual assault in their lifetime, with some estimates suggesting that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered between 1956 and 2016. According to a 2015 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the proportion of Indigenous women homicide victims has continued to increase since 1991 and, by 2014, was almost six times higher than the homicide rate of non-Indigenous women.
First commemorated in 2010, Red Dress Day is meant to honour and bring awareness to the thousands of women, girls, and two-spirit people who have been subjected to disproportionate violence in Canada. It was inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black’s REDress Project installation, wherein she hung empty red dresses in representation of missing and murdered Indigenous women as “an aesthetic response to this critical national issue.”
The interactive community art installation at the library will begin at noon on Monday with an opening ceremony and smudge with drumming in the Legacy Space, and smudges will be held every morning at 10 a.m. until May 5.
“Whether someone adds to the dress, comes to a smudge, or just takes a quiet moment to be present, that’s part of the message too,” Kretschmar said. “These lives are not forgotten.”
The Red Dress project has been developed in partnership with Niijkiwendidaa Anishnaabekwewag Services Circle and the Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre.
“The Red Dress installation provides a visible, community-based way to honour those who have been lost, hold space for those who continue to seek justice, and foster meaningful awareness,” reads a media release from the library.
“The library invites everyone to visit the installation, take a moment to reflect, and add to the collective dress. Each piece of fabric represents a life, a voice, and a shared commitment to community care and remembrance.”
The library’s Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Legacy Space was established in 2023 as part of an initiative by the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, founded by late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie along with his brother Mike Downie and the family of Chanie Wenjack.
Chanie was an Indigenous boy who had been taken away from his family home in Ogoki Post, located on the Marten Falls Reserve in northern Ontario, in 1963 and forced to live at a residential school in Kenora. In 1966, the 12-year-old boy died from exposure after he fled the school and attempted to walk the 600-kilometre journey back to his home.
The Peterborough Public Library was the first public library to be recognized as a Legacy Space, which is intended to be a safe and welcoming place where conversations and education about Indigenous history and the collective journey towards reconciliation are encouraged and supported.
