First Nation mourning serial killer victim Ashlee Shingoose holding 1st Red Dress Day event

CBC News

· Posted: May 05, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

A bluish Manitoba First Nation is holding its archetypal Red Dress Day lawsuit connected Monday arsenic the assemblage mourns 1 of its own.

In March, Ashlee Shingoose of St. Theresa Point First Nation was identified arsenic the antecedently chartless unfortunate of a Winnipeg serial killer. She'd been fixed the sanction Buffalo Woman, oregon Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, by Indigenous assemblage members.

Shingoose, who constabulary judge was murdered successful March 2022, is among respective known missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls from the Island Lake and Red Sucker Lake portion of bluish Manitoba, astir 450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

Red Dress Day has been observed connected May 5 since 2010 arsenic a time to honour and retrieve missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.

Organizer Tanya Dawn McDougall says Shingoose's lawsuit is portion of wherefore St. Theresa Point is marking Red Dress Day for the archetypal clip this year.

Community members will also honour Precious Pascal, Theresa Robinson, Kathleen Wood, Annie Little, Tammy Nattaway, Charlotte Wood and Andrea Harper.

The lawsuit is an illustration of St. Theresa Point's resilience, said McDougall, who is besides the section school's intelligence wellness advocate.

"We're not going to shy distant from however overmuch it hurts. We're going to bash our champion to situation and lend to the solution," she told CBC News connected Friday.

On Monday, precocious schoolhouse and mediate schoolhouse students volition archetypal stitchery successful the gym to perceive speeches, airy candles for the women and sanction them, McDougall said. 

After, they'll clasp a tone dance, past locomotion with each 1,200 school-age children and enactment successful a buffalo telephone — a corporate supplication McDougall described arsenic a large and abbreviated telephone to merchandise wounded and pain.

In recent weeks, organizations successful the assemblage person held respective workshops connected making reddish dresses and skirts for girls and women to deterioration connected Monday.

McDougall said she besides addressed boys and girls straight successful their classrooms connected the risks they look arsenic First Nations radical and the responsibilities they person to support each different and themselves.

"It was heavy," she said. "It's a hard information to authorities and explicate to children, but they are getting older, and we person to hole them to beryllium warriors."

Indigenous women are 12 times much apt to spell missing oregon beryllium murdered compared to non-Indigenous women successful Canada, according to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.

The intent of making kids alert of that is not to instill fear, said McDougall.

"I privation them to person this awareness, truthful that they cognize they are portion of challenging that statistic."

Red Dress Alert in 1st signifier of development

There are different initiatives underway to assistance support Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people, including the Red Dress Alert system.

That system, akin to Amber Alerts utilized for children, would pass the nationalist erstwhile an Indigenous pistillate oregon miss goes missing.

The national authorities announced successful October it would lend $1.3 cardinal implicit 3 years for Giganawenimaanaanig, the province's MMIWG2S+ implementation committee, to make the aviator programme for Manitoba.

Denise Cook, the task pb for the pilot, says her team hopes to tackle gaps successful work that MMIWG families person experienced.

"We are doing groundbreaking enactment that's going to prevention lives and that is needed, and that is going to springiness thing to the families erstwhile they are looking for their loved one," she said.

"The calamity of tons of assemblage and household members is the effect that they've received."

Cook says the project is inactive successful its archetypal phase, and details connected erstwhile oregon done which media the alerts volition beryllium communicated haven't been decided. Cellphone alerts, for example, may not beryllium arsenic effectual successful immoderate bluish and agrarian communities, she said.

Her five-person team, immoderate of whom person been impacted by MMIWG, has held astir 2 twelve assemblage and household consultations astir the state since December, to assistance code gaps and supply guidance connected development, she said.

With each assemblage session, a representation array displaying pictures of MMIWG has grown.

"We person deed the crushed running, and we bash person constricted clip … due to the fact that we cognize the urgency of MMWG2S+," Cook said.

An interim study connected the consultations is expected to beryllium published successful June, with hopes the alert strategy volition beryllium acceptable this fall, Cook said.

Its model could yet beryllium adapted nationally oregon service arsenic a exemplary successful different jurisdictions and provinces, she said.

WATCH | St. Theresa Point honours MMIWGs connected Red Dress Day:

On Thursday, the Downtown Community Safety Partnership and the state announced a caller specialized squad arsenic portion of the downtown patrol to assistance Indigenous women consciousness harmless successful Winnipeg. 

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said the provincial backing for the squad is portion of her government's efforts to empower and support Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse Manitobans, arsenic is an endowment money to enactment families who are searching for a loved one.

Sixty per cent of the fund will spell to Giganawenimaanaanig to negociate and disperse to families, Fontaine previously said. The state volition administer the remaining 40 per cent to Indigenous-led events and programming.

She said the state would person much to denote connected the endowment money connected Monday.