Events held to remember missing girls and women

This summer, the hearts and minds of people from across Saskatchewan were focused on the many young girls and women who have gone missing or have been murdered. A number of events were held across the province to remember them and to remind the public of the role they can play in helping families find out the fate of their loved ones.
On July 5, a barbecue was held in Core Community Park in Regina in remembrance of Tamra Keepness. The event coincided with the two-year anniversary of the young girl's disappearance from her Regina home when she was just five years old.
Also in July, the family of Daleen Bosse led a Missing Sisters walk from Onion Lake First Nation to Saskatoon. The walk began on July 24 and ended on July 28, with about 70 walkers coming out to remember Bosse and draw attention to the large number of Aboriginal women who have gone missing over the years.
Bosse was 25 when she went missing. The university student and mother to a young daughter was last seen in Saskatoon on May 18, 2005.
On Aug. 12, the family of Melanie Geddes held a memorial walk to remember the young woman who went missing in Regina on Aug. 13, 2005 and to call for justice for all missing and murdered First Nations women and children. On Dec. 20, 2005, the remains of the 24-year-old mother to three young children were found in a field near Southey, along the banks of the Qu'Appelle River. The investigation into her murder is still ongoing.
The walk began at the location on the 900 Block of Robinson Street where she was last seen and made its way to the outskirts of the city where a caravan of cars then drove participants to the location where Geddes had been found.
There are 28 young girls and women on the missing persons list posted on the Web site of the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police. Of those 28, 17 are Aboriginal. Geddes' name is among them, with a notation that she has been located.
That notation has now also been added to the listing for Victoria Jane Nashacappo, who was 21 when she went missing from Saskatoon on Sept. 25, 2002. Her remains were found in June in the basement of a demolished house south of Saskatoon. Fifty-seven-year-old Brian Robert Casement has been charged with her murder.
For Gwenda Yuzicappi, whose daughter Amber Redman has been missing for a year now, holding public events to honour these missing or murdered women is important because it gets the information about their cases out into the public eye.
On July 15, Yuzicappi and her family joined with the family of Dolores Whiteman, the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation community and the Fort Qu'Appelle RCMP to host an Awareness Walk Honouring Our Missing First Nation Children, Sisters and Brothers. The event marked the first anniversary of Redman's disappearance. She was 19 when she was last seen outside of Trapper's Bar in Fort Qu'Appelle on July 15, 2005. Dolores Whiteman who, like Redman, is from Standing Buffalo, has been missing since the early 1980s.
Yuzicappi estimated about 300 people took part in the walk, which began in Fort Qu'Appelle and made its way to Standing Buffalo. Yuzicappi said she organized the walk both to raise awareness and to honour her daughter's spirit.
"The reason I walk from Trapper's Bar to Standing Buffalo is I'm wanting to bring her spirit home."
The walk began with a prayer from an Elder and a song from a drum group, which also performed during the procession to the reserve.
"They stopped four places along the way and they sang beautiful songs in honouring Amber's spirit and keeping it alive," Yuzicappi said.
Redman and Whiteman were also honoured during the Standing Buffalo powwow held the weekend of Aug. 11 to 13, with Yuzicappi being joined by Dolores Whiteman's daughter, Laurie, to talk about their missing loved ones.
"So Laurie ... she spoke from a daughter's perspective who's missing a mother. And then I spoke from a mother's perspective who's missing a daughter."
Both the walk and the presentation at the powwow have succeeded in raising awareness of her daughter's disappearance, and of the need for the public to play a role in helping solve other disappearances as well, Yuzicappi said. Following both, she received calls from people with information they think may be useful in her daughter's case.
"I know that by doing things in the public eye, it's encouraging them to come forward and that's beautiful," she said. "The main focus that I'm trying to do is there may be a different person out there that's hearing this that didn't know about it. And if I can get that message out to them that our loved ones are missing, and having the tips come in afterwards, that's a plus."
Yuzicappi is hoping to organize another awareness walk sometime in September.