It took about 40 years for Violet Soosay to find her missing and murdered aunt.
"I grew old looking for my aunt," said Violet who spoke during a Red Dress Day event held at Red Deer Polytechnic on Thursday.
"It was many years of not knowing. It kind of tears you apart bit by bit by bit."
But in 2021, the Kern County sheriff’s office in California identified the remains of a Jane Doe as belonging to her aunt, Shirley Ann Soosay, 35, who had been buried in a cemetery in 1980.
She was stabbed 26 times, and her body was discovered dumped in an orchard.
Violet said American investigators went out of their way to identify her aunt and that's why she was found. But in Canada, initiatives stemming from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women inquiry are not providing the assistance that families need to search and find their missing loved ones.
She said a fund is needed, which is one of the 231 Calls to Action in the MMIW report, to pay the costs associated with searching.
"That's the one I've been paying attention to, to set up a funding agency of some kind to help these people who have missing family members."
Violet and another aunt spent years searching in British Columbia and Seattle where her Aunt Shirley had visited before cards and letters she regularly sent to her family suddenly stopped in 1979.
She said in the beginning when they reached out to police they were told more than once, "She's probably just another dead Indian."
"I learned early not to depend on anyone outside the family."
She said whenever they could pull together enough money for gas, meals and hotel they would continue the search. Some years, they didn't have the money. At one point in the mid-90s detectives were hired, but the money ran out.
"Because we're not rich it was really hard. Investigations take a lot of time and money."
The justice system has also not been listening, not paying attention, not helping, because they don't have the resources, she said.
"And even if they did, remember we're not prioritized. We're Indigenous and that is the hard core reality. I don't gloss over anything. I speak my truth and that is my truth.
"I don't mean to offend anybody. I don't mean to discourage anybody. But I only have to share from my own experience."
The missing are not being found, and more Indigenous people continue to go missing, she said.
"Just in my community, there are 42 people who are missing, both men and women, from a community of about 15,000," said Violet about just the cases that she knew about in Maskwacis.
Two more Red Dress Day ceremonies will be held in Red Deer on May 5.
We Walk to Remember All MMIP event begins at 8 a.m. at the Common Ground Garden Project, 5581 45 St. Participants will walk to join the event in City Hall Park which begins at noon.
— with files from The Canadian Press