Several dozen friends and family members of missing and murdered Menominee Tribe members gathered Feb. 14 to witness the unveiling of a red jingle dress to honor their loved ones.
“We’re holding this event so we can all come together and celebrate our missing family members,” said Alysse Corn, whose mother, Rae Tourtilliot, was murdered nearly 40 years ago.
Her killer has yet to be found.
The Jingle Dress is a known symbol of healing across Indian Country, and many nations hosted Red Jingle Dress events, including the one at the Menominee Logging Museum, located on the Menominee Tribal Historic Preservation grounds on County Road VV in Keshena.
“This particular Red Jingle Dress … is a gift to local Menominee MMIP families from our organization as recognition of their strength, resilience and work to bring justice and healing to their relatives,” said Kristin Welch, founder of the Waking Women Healing Institute. “It’s a way to honor and remember all those taken and still seeking healing and justice.”
She said the dress symbolizes survivors of family violence, sexual violence and the families of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
“We do that because we are survivors ourselves,” Welch said. “We’ve moved into this giving-back stage. We want to help other young women, girls, men, boys, work through that type of violence in their lives. More importantly, we want to work to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Leaders in the organization work with young people to show what a loving relationship looks like.
“When we come to do our work with survivors, it’s about holding space and walking alongside each other and with each other through that really difficult time,” Welch said. “And just really helping them remember who they are.”
Welch referred to the term “sacred rage,” turning what has happened into something beautiful and life-giving.
The MMIP movement is a call to action to raise awareness to the rate at which Indigenous women and girls go missing or are murdered. This movement is more than a decade strong now.
A symbol of this movement is often a red handprint, sometimes painted over individuals’ mouths, to symbolize how native peoples have been silenced in life and in death. The red handprint can be seen on clothing, skirts, shirts, hats and other awareness items.
“The criminal justice system is not a system for us,” she told the gathering. “It was made by somebody else for somebody else. We want to arm our relatives with as much knowledge as they can possibly have, so they fight back against it, push back against it. We can say, ‘This is not an adequate response. What are you going to do about it?’”
For more information on Waking Women Health Institute, visit www.wakingwomenhealingint.org.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
Kristin Welch, founder of the Waking Women Healing Institute, said the red jingle dress unveiled Feb. 14 is a way to honor and remember all those Indigenous people who have been taken and their families who are still seeking healing and justice. (Kevin Passon | NEW Media)
A red jingle dress symbolizes survivors of family violence, sexual violence and the families of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples movement is a call to action to raise awareness to the rate at which Indigenous women and girls go missing or are murdered. It originated in Canada more than a decade ago. (Kevin Passon | NEW Media)
