It began, as in previous years, at the Neighbours of the North Park at the south end of Main Street.
After a pipe ceremony and a smudging, the Grandmother’s Walk down Main Street, a demonstration consisting of many First Nations and Métis community members as well as a handful of others, kept pace with the music of women’s voices raised in song and the beat of their drums as they made their way to Pioneer Square. Each participant was to hold in their hand a small bundle of tobacco and pray about missing and murdered women in Canada.
At the end of their walk, those assembled listened to a prayer from Elder Margaret Head-Steppan and a group of five young local drummers who played the “Grandmother Song” and the “Friendship Song” on their large powwow drum. These were followed by Cranberry Portage’s Whispering Loon Singers, who also performed several songs on ceremonial hand drums, and were eventually joined by elders and other women participants.
Elder Val Charlette, a former member of Thompson’s Grandmother’s Council who is currently based in The Pas, spoke briefly about the founding of the Council, seven years earlier, in the northern community.
A group of women had assembled in Winnipeg and went to visit with inmates of the Stony Mountain penitentiary, speaking to them of what brought them there. Many spoke of abuses that were done to them in their childhood and youth, and the women felt that it was their own failure to teach their children and grandchildren how to protect themselves from physical, mental, and emotional abuse.
The Grandmother’s Council formed and responded to the problem by setting up a five-year plan to teach their children cultural ceremonies and lessons such as drum teaching and the creation of the Medicine Wheel for healing. They also put on demonstrations such as the Grandmother’s Walk to bring awareness of the problems of abuse to the larger community.
“It’s important to talk about it,” Charlette said to the attentive crowd. “Abuse is secretive, and it creates continuing cycles. We must listen to our youth.”
The council’s activities have been picked up by a variety of regional organizations across the province over the years.
In Flin Flon, the walk has been organized by the Flin Flon Area Against Sexual Exploitation (FFAASE) for the past four years. FFAASE is funded by a provincial organization called Tracia’s Trust, named after a youth who took her own life in response to the abuses she had suffered.
Head-Steppan ended the ceremony with a solemn request that those assembled should “Pray for our children. You know that our children are sacred gifts of the Creator.”
