Annual Indigenous Women’s Candlelight Memorial Vigil Seattle

In solidarity with the Annual Indigenous Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver, BC we will again hold a candlelight vigil at Westlake in downtown Seattle in honor and remembrance of our missing and murdered indigenous women on February 14th. We will begin at 6pm with an opening prayer followed by the sharing of songs and prayers.

Bring your drums and invite your community to join. Let us know if you would like to share a song, prayer, or story to honor a love one.

We raise our hands to the Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver. They started the first memorial march in 1992 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman in downtown Vancouver. They have marched every February 14th since then.

To honor the work already done for 26 years by the Vancouver march, we will share their story from their website. All credit goes to their website.

“The first women’s memorial march was held in 1992 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Her name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Unceded Coast Salish Territories.”

“Twenty Seven years later, the women’s memorial march continue to honor the lives of missing and murdered women and all women’s lives lost in the Downtown Eastside. Increasing deaths of many vulnerable women from DTES still leaves family, friends, loved ones, and community members with an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. Indigenous women disproportionately continue to go missing or be murdered with minimal to no action to address these tragedies or the systemic nature of gendered violence, poverty, racism, or colonialism.”

“We continue to call for a national inquiry that is led by family and community members and that centers our experiences, need for healing, and quest for answers, concrete action, and meaningful justice. This event is organized and led by women in the DTES because women – especially indigenous women – face physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis. The February 14th Women’s Memorial March is an opportunity to come together to grieve the loss of our beloved sisters, remember the women who are still missing, and to dedicate ourselves to justice.”

To learn more about the Vancouver march —
“The first women’s memorial march was held in 1992 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Her name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Unseeded Coast Salish Territories.”
Their website:
https://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/