Gwenda Yuzicappi sleeps with the phone next to her pillow, anxiously waiting for word about her daughter Amber Redman.
Gwenda Yuzicappi sleeps with the phone next to her pillow, anxiously waiting for word about her daughter Amber Redman.Redman was just 19 when she disappeared from Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask., more than two years ago, becoming one of the hundreds of missing or murdered native women and girls.
But Yuzicappi holds out hope.
"I believe she's still alive. I believe that she will come home soon and I need to hold onto that as a mother,'' Yuzicappi said Thursday at a vigil at a teepee in Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask.
"Until I have facts, evidence in front of me that says otherwise, that's my belief is that she's still alive.''
Yuzicappi was among nearly 50 people who stood in a circle, with candles in hand, at the teepee to remember the missing and murdered women.
"I'm not the only mother, I'm not the only father, I'm not the only aunt or grandmother, the brothers, the sisters, the cousins that have this empty feeling inside of us,'' an emotional Yuzicappi told the gathering.
It was one of more than 30 vigils held across the country to denounce a continuing epidemic of violence against aboriginal women.
Beverley Jacobs of the Native Women's Association of Canada urged governments and police forces to craft national strategies as the ranks of the murdered and missing continue to grow.
"Innocent women are being stolen from us every week as families are shattered and friendships lost,'' Jacobs told a news conference on Parliament Hill.
"It's time for all women and men to say: No more.''
Jacobs is midway through a five-year Sisters in Spirit campaign to build a database of cases and raise awareness. She estimates that at least 500 native women and girls have vanished or been killed in the last 30 years.
Sandra Gagnon's sister Janet Henry disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside ten years ago.
Gagnon last saw her on June 25, 1997 when Henry said goodbye with: "I love you and I miss you much.'' It was a reference to one of Henry's favourite Janet Jackson songs.
Henry was 37, the mother of a daughter, and a cherished sister who used drugs and sometimes worked in the sex trade. Her disappearance is unsolved.
Gagnon recalled Thursday how slowly police initially responded to reports her sister and other women were disappearing.
"We need to keep this campaign going so we can get help to bring awareness and be acknowledged,'' she said. "The missing women were loved. They were somebody's daughter, mom, auntie, and best friend.''
In the most notorious case involving women from Vancouver's troubled downtown, Robert Pickton is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Mona Wilson, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey and Andrea Joesbury.
He is to face a second trial at a later date on an additional 20 counts of first-degree murder. At least 41 other women are still missing from the Downtown Eastside.
Janet Henry is not among the women Pickton is accused of killing.
Jacobs says the "epidemic of violence'' against native women should be confronted as "a national outrage.''
Victims are abused and murdered in appalling numbers, she says, and governments cannot turn a blind eye.
Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, says there has been little formal action since the release, three years ago, of a damning report called Stolen Sisters, which documented the magnitude of the problem.
"This cannot go on,'' he said. "Indigenous women can not keep coming to Ottawa pleading for the safety of their granddaughters, their daughters, their sisters.
"It's time for comprehensive, national action.''
-- With files from Sue Bailey in Ottawa
