The Woman Behind Red Dress Day: Art, Activism & Indigenous Women's Power | Jaime Black-Morsette
On this episode of the Matriarch Movement Podcast, Shayla Stonechild sits down with Jaime Black-Morsette, the artist whose work gave this country Red Dress Day.
Jaime is a Red River Métis multidisciplinary artist and activist of Anishinaabe and Finnish descent, with family scrip signed in the community of St. Andrews, Manitoba. She lives and works on her home territory near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. In 2009 she founded the REDress Project, an installation of empty red dresses responding to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S+). It has travelled across Canada and internationally and inspired Red Dress Day, the national day of awareness held every May 5th. Her practice spans installation, photography, performance art and immersive film and video, and explores memory, identity, place and resistance.
While working with and through trauma, Jaime’s art turned toward healing. Her work moved into the body and into the lands, waters and circles of women, through pieces like her 2017 photographic series Conversations with the Land. Her latest work centres water as a living entity that holds and nurtures all of life.
In this conversation, Jaime shares the moment in Colombia that changed the course of her life, the vision that first showed her red dresses filling the country, and how a project about violence became a path back to women’s power and presence. We also talk about the land as co-creator, water as memory and rebirth, caring for yourself while carrying your community’s stories, lateral violence and discernment, and what’s next as the REDress Project grows into a non-profit.
This season, Indigenous Voices of This Generation, is created in partnership with the Indigenous Screen Office and YouTube Canada. Recorded on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome & introducing Jaime Black-Morsette
02:14 Jaime’s intro & the long line of matriarchs
03:04 Where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet
05:38 The land as co-creator: working with water & fire
06:46 Where her drive for advocacy began
07:59 The dream behind the Matriarch Movement
09:20 Where the REDress Project seed began
10:09 The Colombia performance that changed everything
12:21 What the red dress symbolizes
13:38 The Book of Jessica & the empty red dress
14:14 Watching the vision become Red Dress Day
15:26 How allies can support: the 231 Calls for Justice
17:47 Self-care while carrying community stories
19:45 Healing through art, writing, singing & lakes
21:30 Finding a voice she didn’t know was silenced
22:12 Growing up in a creative Métis family
23:33 How people have responded to the REDress Project
24:06 What “matriarch” means to Jaime & the Sky Woman story
26:05 What happens in the body when we heal on the land
27:35 Water as the womb: coming out new
28:17 Nibi: the teaching of women & water
30:16 What the water remembers
31:30 Advice for young Indigenous women & girls
33:11 Lateral violence & choosing distance
34:48 Discernment as a life’s work
35:39 What’s next: the REDress Project non-profit
36:08 Where to find & support Jaime
37:15 Closing
🔴 SUPPORT JAIME REDress Project: redressproject.com Artist website: jaimeblackartist.com Book: REDress: Art, Action and the Power of Presence
📖 LEARN MORE National Inquiry into MMIWG Final Report & the 231 Calls for Justice: mmiwg-ffada.ca
If this conversation moved you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a comment telling us what the water has taught you. 💧
#RedDressDay #MMIWG #MMIWG2S #IndigenousWomen #MatriarchMovement #REDressProject #IndigenousArt #Métis
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