Four Delta secondary schools are paying tribute today (May 5) as the day of recognition of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2 Spirit Peoples thanks to the vision and creativity of Taylor Wiggly and Avery Hansen.
Working with Delta’s Indigenous Education Curriculum Coordinator Cody Forbes, the Grade 12 South Delta Secondary students are behind Dressing Delta Red.
The project has seen them work with textile and art teachers to guide students through the creation of red dresses and other related art as learning tools to educate them on the cause behind Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2 Spirit People day. There are 10 participating classes in total from Burnsview, North Delta, South Delta and Delta.
Wiggly and Hansen’s Dressing Delta Red idea was the result of their time last fall with Experiences Canada, a national registered charity that helps young Canadians connect with other like-minded youth to explore the country’s social issues. The theme of the online sessions was Truth and Reconciliation. Explore Canada provided them with $2,500 to facilitate their initiative.
“We knew that we wanted to do something with dresses because I have some experience with making clothes,” explained Hansen. “Cody kind of had the idea originally and we thought we should go and get some help with people who are experienced with this stuff so we got feedback from Elders as well.
“We wanted to bring it into the classrooms but do it in a safe of a way as possible as this is a dark subject matter.”
“It’s definitely different than everyone making a bunch of (social media) posts and talking about it,” added Wiggly. “This is more personal and actually doing stuff with your hands and learning about it.”
Forbes began reaching out to schools about six weeks ago to discuss the time frame and how the project could be implemented in various classes from textiles to arts.
“It was a bit of a heads up to what the project is going to be so that they could start to think of how they could use that in their classes because we wanted it to be available at every level,” explained Forbes.
“Some are making a fully finished red dress and then there's everything in between. We’re hoping to have them all up and installed in the schools (by today).”
Hansen and Wiggly were quick to put out that the sensitivity of the subject means the displays will be discreetly done at each location. Forbes added the input from district Elders for the project was invaluable.
“We wanted their feedback and sort of their blessing too because they're the knowledge keepers,” he said. “They hold a lot of that wisdom and they've just had the experience over the years.
“We wanted to make sure that we sort of got the thumbs up from them and any tweaking that was necessary. Like one of the things that they requested that we do in the presentation was not using the acronym for the day, but actually use the whole title so you don’t reduce its meaning. That’s something that I wouldn't have thought of.”
