18th Annual Strawberry Ceremony
Schedule
Tue Feb 14 2023 at 12:30 pm to 01:30 pm
Location
Toronto Police Service | Toronto, ON
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Together Again!! Ceremony at Police HQ only/No feast!
Please wear a mask to keep each other safe!
This February 14th, 2023, the Strawberry Ceremony will be back in person at Toronto Police Headquarters for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we moved to a virtual format to keep each other safe. We look forward to bringing community and supporters back together again. The isolation of the pandemic has been particularly hard on those who grieve violent losses.
Our gathering this year comes in the wake of a massive amount of predatory violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people across the country, including the serial murders of four women in Winnipeg by a 35-year-old white man: Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, and a fourth woman who remains unidentified but was named Buffalo Woman by the local Indigenous community.
Police have stated they believe the bodies of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran could be at the Prairie Green Landfill. Some of Rebecca Contois’ remains were found in a dumpster as well as at the Brady landfill. Yet Winnipeg police have decided not to search for the missing bodies. "They say that they can't search because it's not feasible. Is human life not feasible?" said Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan, at a news conference in Ottawa.
Violence also includes the criminalization of survivors, like Dawn Walker, who instead of being protected or supported when she sought help, was forced to flee intimate partner violence and is now facing charges.
Since we last gathered at police headquarters in February 2020, there have been unprecedented protests against police across North America, including Toronto, after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, just two days later. The 29-year-old Indigenous, Ukrainian Black woman fell to her death from the 24th floor of a High Park apartment while 6 uniformed police officers were responding to a 911 call and prevented entry to her family members.
This year is Toronto’s 18th Strawberry Ceremony honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, trans and two spirit people. Almost two decades have passed since the first time No More Silence marked the day at Toronto Police Headquarters to demonstrate support for families in Vancouver, where the community has been holding the Memorial March since 1992. At that time, the infamous serial killer who had abducted women from the city’s Downtown Eastside to murder them on his Coquitlam pig farm was on trial. Over 60% of the women known to have been killed on the farm were Indigenous. We continue to feel the impact of the societal indifference towards Indigenous women, girls, trans and two spirit people, who are part of community and are deeply loved. Toronto police headquarters continues to be our place of gathering to underline the complicity of police and the settler colonial state, not just in the Vancouver case of a serial killer, but in the disproportionately high rates of violence faced by Indigenous people over all.
It is horrifying that after so many years of activism and organizing, including a National Inquiry that culminated in the 2019 report which took the bold step of framing this violence as genocide, we see no abatement in the numbers of vulnerable community members killed due to anti-Indigenous racism, nor has the response from institutions improved.
Despite growing support for the demands to defund police and reroute millions from their budget into community care, Mayor John Tory has recently announced his desire to boost police funding by almost $50 million. This contributes to the over-policing and under protection of our communities. It is our communities that keep each other safe. We will continue to fight to dismantle the settler colonial state and conditions that create violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people. We look forward to bringing community back together again to mourn collectively in ceremony with loving kindness.
Message [email protected] for more information and to endorse/donate/support.
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Where is it happening?
Toronto Police Service, 40 College Street,Toronto,ON,CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
