REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence by Jaime Black-Morsette

REDress is a moving anthology of work by Indigenous women, Elders, community activists, artists, academics and family members affected by the tragedy of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S). Edited by Jaime Black-Morsette, herself a Red River Métis artist and activist, the work is an intimate snapshot documenting first-hand accounts of historical and ongoing colonial violence against Indigenous girls, women and Two-Spirit individuals.

The late Cathy Merrick, an outspoken Cree advocate from the Cross Lake Band of Indians, former Chief of Pimicikamak and former Grand Chief elected to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, wrote the Foreword to the book. Her words:

Each page of this book holds the marks of loss, while reminding us of love’s ability to nurture a collective responsibility that perseveres against the luxury of indifference. Reading this book means taking on the responsibility to act upon its truths with the hope that one day our scars will heal…

Merrick did not live long enough to know that the remains of four missing Indigenous women have now been reclaimed from landfills in Manitoba and are in the process of being returned to their families. Merrick rightly pointed out that awareness is the first step towards change, but that action is also necessary. Merrick also argued that the acknowledgment of intersectionality between social and political issues is essential in order to understand how certain groups have been marginalized and silenced. This book is both a call to action, and also a historical overview of struggle and pain.

An important book on social justice, this anthology is both compelling and heart-breaking.

The REDress project documents the comprehensive use of art installation to bear witness to the rippling pain of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people. Inspired by a group of women in Bogota who overtook a town square to call out the names of those they had lost because of their advocacy against oppression, Black-Morsette envisions the red dress as a symbol for a similar kind of advocacy, so that those who are missing are not forgotten. Black-Morsette’s words:

I imagine red dresses. Red dresses along city streets and in parks and trees, where every day the public passes by. Red dresses confronting people on their way to work, to school, to dinner. Red dresses as a stark reminder of all those we’ve lost. Red dresses to remember…

I find seven dresses – cotton, satin, polyester, a gown; floor-length, a dress, long-sleeved and long at the hem, in a fabric light as air. I gather these dresses and keep them close, care for them. It’s winter and I bring them to the long boughs of a willow overlooking the river, place them in a group in the trees. The long-sleeved dress catches the wind first and like a dancer is animated. The other dresses sway in time… Over the next year more than one hundred red dresses are donated to me to begin this work…. I am invited to create large installations of red dresses on college and university campuses, at community organizations and schools all across the country.

The anthology also contains poetry, shared memories, interviews and extracts from key reports such as Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. One such poem by Cambria Harris, West Flying Sparrow Woman from Long Plain First Nation, is called Bring Me Home and begins,

The landfill is our home
While we lay alone
Waiting for them to find us
In the garbage dump

Other contributors also point out that young men are also missing. Judy Da Silva, an Elder and community leader from Grassy Narrows First Nation, writes

In Thunder Bay I think there was like eighteen young boys that disappeared or showed up dead… All this violence and colonialism, they just want everyone to forget about it and pretend it doesn’t happen, because if it doesn’t happen to you every day, you don’t even know it’s happening. And that’s the first thing – being loud and saying, “This is happening.”

An important book on social justice, this anthology is both compelling and heart-breaking. Highly recommended.

Jaime Black-Morsette (she/them) is a Red River Métis artist and activist, with family scrip signed in the community of St Andrews, Manitoba. Jaime lives and works on her home territory near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Founder of The REDress project in 2009, Black-Morsette has been using their art practice as a way to gather community and create action and change around the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls across Turtle Island for over a decade. Black-Morsette’s interdisciplinary art practice includes immersive film and video, installation art, photography and performance art practices. Her work explores themes of memory, identity, place and resistance.

Publisher: PORTAGE & MAIN PRESS (April 2, 2025)
Shipping dimensions: 10″ x 7″ | 160 pp
ISBN: 9781774921388

Lucy E. M. Black

Website

Lucy E.M. Black (she/her/hers) is the author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet, The Brickworks and Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth. A Quilting of Scars will be released October 2025. Her award-winning short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada. She is a dynamic workshop presenter, experienced interviewer and freelance writer. She lives with her partner in the small lakeside town of Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.