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Angela Sterritt: The Legacy of Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada

By Kerry Clare

tagged: angela sterritt, #mmiw, missing and murdered indigenous women, tina fontaine, helen betty osborne, talking history, international women's day

Angela Sterritt Art

Credit: Angela Sterritt. "Honour the Dead, Fight for the Living, Honour the Living, Fight for the Dead." 3.5 ft x 4.5 ft. Acrylic on canvas.

Talking History focuses on a wide range of topics in Canadian history, and it consists of articles by Canada's foremost historians and history experts. Our contributors use the power of narrative to bring the past to life and to show how it is not just relevant, but essential to our understanding of Canada and the world today. "Talking History" is a series made possible through a special funding grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Angela Sterritt is an award-winning journalist, artist, and filmmaker from the Gitxsan Nation. She's been a working journalist for over 15 years and is currently a CBC reporter in television, radio and online. She was recently awarded a prestigious William Southam Journalism Fellowship—the first Indigenous person of Canada to receive the award since its inception in 1962.

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Stepping onto the sandy shores of the Red River, a Winnipeg man and his son noticed a bundle floating on the sun-tinged water. It was later found to be the lifeless body of a petite 15-year-old Anishnaabe girl, wrapped in a bag.

The news of Tina Fontaine’s murder in the summer of 2014 flooded the headlines a …