Aboriginal youth seek shoes for Calgary MMIW art project
1,200 pairs to represent each missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girl in Canada
Two Calgary teens are seeking shoes for an art project they hope will bring more awareness to Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
"The count right now is 1,200 approximately," Kaiya La Couvee told the Calgary Eyeopener on Friday.
And so she and her sister, Aiyanna, are trying to collect 1,200 pairs of women's and girl's shoes, including baby and toddler shoes, to commemorate all the "sisters" lost.
They will be setting up an installation the morning of Oct. 4 in Olympic Plaza as part of the annual Awo Taan Healing Lodge Sisters in Sprit March and Vigil.
"We're gonna have the pairs of shoes around in a circle and then inside the inner circle will be … the baby shoes and the toddlers shoes," said Aiyanna Leonard La Couvee.
The Objibwe Cree sisters have been volunteering at the Awo Taan Healing Lodge, an Aboriginal emergency shelter, for five years.
"Our birth mother, she was murdered last November," said Kaiya La Couvee. "This needs to stop we need to create a safe future for … younger girls."
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Donations of shoes in good condition can be dropped off before Tuesday at the University of Calgary Native Centre or you can call 403-998-3950 and the sisters will pick up the shoes at your home.
With files from the Calgary Eyeopener