Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Webinar

  • English

  • French

Date: March 20, 2018

Presented by: Cheryl Bagnall and Tamara Bernard, Ontario Native Women’s Association

Presentation: In this webinar, the Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA) will present on the topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).  This presentation will speak to the issue of MMIW from an Indigenous Women’s perspective as both family and community members.  It will also inform on how ONWA does this work to support the families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women with a focus on the importance of ceremony and how it is a vital component of healing for families who have lost someone.

Bios:

Cheryl Bagnall is an active community member of Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabe, which is located on the Eastern shores of Lake Nipigon in Northwestern Ontario, and is within the 1850 Robinson Superior Treaty area. For the past twenty years, she has worked with highly marginalized First Nation populations within the social service and health promotion sectors in a variety of capacities. Her current employment portfolio includes Building Aboriginal Women’s Leadership, Aboriginal Diabetes Education, Mental Health, Responsible Gambling, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Programs. Cheryl is a Community Development Manager for the Ontario Native Women’s Association.  Cheryl’s educational journey includes an honours degree in both Sociology and Social Work from Lakehead University and is currently completing her Masters of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and will graduate in the spring of 2018.

Tamara Bernard is from Kiasheke Zaaging Anishinaabek (Gull Bay First Nation). She is an experienced educator with demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. She has been an Indigenous advocate for over 10 years and carries a wealth of experience and involvement within Indigenous relations across various communities, as a skilled public speaker, facilitator, consultant, researcher, and capacity builder. Her passion is to share stories and teachings to other people and has presented at TEDxTalks (titled: We are More than Murdered and Missing, 2016), academic conferences, regional strategic chief and council gatherings, and over 40 Indigenous communities across Canada. Tamara dedicated her research to her late great grandmother, Jane Bernard, (titled: We are More than Murdered and Missing, 2017) who was taken in 1966 along with Doreen Hardy. She employs Indigenous research methods to consider the ways that the media narratives and knowledge on MMIWG often focus on their deaths, when this approach takes away from their lived realities of these women and girls, whose impact on their families and communities are much more significant beyond the one violent event that took their lives. Tamara finally learned about her great grandmother as more than her death, which deconstructs the hegemony of westernized knowledge to emphasize the Indigenous woman story, derived from relationships established with Land, Place, Humans, and Spirit World. 

Tamara Bernard, ECE, Hon BA, MA, PhD Candidate is currently the ONWA Researcher and Education Policy Analyst as well as a Contract Lecturer and Research Assistant for Lakehead University.


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