Persephone's Daughters

I have been thinking today about my late friend, Kelly Running Wolf. I have been honouring the powerful gift he shared with me, assisting me to make peace with the past during a sweat lodge ceremony several years ago. I have also been remembering stories of the terrible experiences he and his sister endured at the hands of individuals within the residential school system. I have been mourning the unheralded and unsolved disappearances of so many First Nations women over the years, of the Highway of Tears... and thinking hopeful thoughts of the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission meetings here in Montreal. The words to an old Sunday School tune are playing over in my head: "all are precious in His sight". Why is it so hard for so many in this world to live by this truth? Every one of these disappeared women is someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's mother; but unlike Persephone, some of these will not return.

I would like to make a quilt, red and yellow, black and white, with stars to remember and name each of the disappeared as a visual reminder, but am still left with the question: How do we make the world a place where daughters don't disappear?