Thompson city council is considering a proposal for a monument to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls to be erected on the west side of Mystery Lake Road overlooking the Miles Hart Bridge.
Heidi Spence, director of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak’s MMIWG liaison unit, briefed councillors on her organization’s plans for the monument at their Dec. 5 committee of the whole meeting. She said it’s important to have a space for family members and other loved one of missing and murdered women to have a place commemorating them in the north, where many of them are from.
“There’s a monument in southern Manitoba,” Spence said. “We wanted to have one in the north for the family members that reside in Northern Manitoba.”
Though the process of designing the monument was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Spence said the have been recent community visits to Bunibonibee Cree Nation, Fox Lake Cree Nation, Gillam, God’s Lake First Nation, Northlands Denesuline First Nation, O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation and Shamattawa First Nation.
The community visits were two-day affairs including empowerment and engagement activities as well as group sessions with the lead monument designer where loved ones shared stories of their lost friends and relatives and gave their ideas about what kind of structure they would like to see.
“We kind of pulled those stories and took all the ideas and he was able to come up with the design that we now have, that we definitely want to build,” Spence said.
The proposed site, on the left side of Mystery Lake Road for those headed north, is near a Millennium Trail access point and Spence said it has already been a de facto gathering place for families and friends of MMIWG.
“Whenever we do community events around MMIWG, I find that the community members naturally go there to do ribbon tying and to do tobacco offerings,” Spence said.
MKO is asking the city to donate the land where the monument will sit as well as to provide in-kind support in the form of a concrete pad and piles for the pad as well as the electrical connection for lights.
The current plan is for the monument — a female figure standing in front of decorated outstretched wings — to be on an angle towards the road, Spence said in response to a question from Coun. Duncan Wong.
