The Silent Jingle living art represents murdered and missing Indigenous women in Atlantic Canada

By: Ryan McKellop - Dec. 16, 2024

The Silent Jingle is a living art project that Lox MacMillan-Metatawabin and Cassidy McKellop have been working on. 

The idea of the project came to MacMillan-Metatawabin last August, when she was working at Mi'kmaq Printing and Design. She and a group of women came up with the idea of a red jingle dress, that would represent murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG). 

The red dress has been a symbol for MMIWG since 2010, when Métis artist Jaime Black created the “REDress Project.” This project hung red dresses in public places, on trees and lamp posts to visualize those who have been murdered or gone missing. 

Gopala Metatawabin is Lox’s mother as well as the MMIWG coordinator for Abegweit First Nation.  

Her aunt was murdered in 1986 in Saskatchewan. She wants to help other families like hers to be able to heal. 

“No one was ever charged, and it just felt like the police weren’t taking it seriously, and then you hear about how that happens so often, the rates are so much higher in our communities, and it does kind of feel like on different levels that we’re not cared about.” 

The red dress acts as a symbol on many levels. 

“The dress itself as a word, red dress can mean redress, so redressing past mistakes that have been done in terms of addressing MMIWG cases that have happened.” 

The dress is also symbolic, it's often hung along the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. A stretch of highway that has been the site of over 80 murders and disappearances. 

Metatawabin said she thinks this project will create more dialogue and bring more attention to the issue. 

“More of a conversation is going to happen because of it, I think it gives people inspiration to do their own projects to feel safe to find ways to express their grief, or just not feeling alone,” she added. “It’s very healing, I think a lot of people suffer in silence and they feel that nobody else understands what they’re going through and I think an event like this gives them a place to not feel alone.” 

MacMillan-Metatawabin said she hopes this project will help bring public awareness to the issue of MMIWG.  

The dress is planned to be unveiled in the spring of 2025. It will feature jingles with the names of women and girls who have gone missing in Atlantic Canada, with future plans of possibly touring across the country.  

As a living art piece, more names and jingles can be added as the project gets toured around Canada. 

“We wanted to do something that would commemorate murdered and missing Indigenous women.” She added. “And then it was just the idea of the cape, and then we wanted to then talk about the jingles on it.” 

The team settled on the idea of a cape with a hood, to cover the face of the model when it gets unveiled, to represent that it could be anyone in that dress. 

Each jingle on the dress will have the name of an MMIWG from Atlantic Canada. When everything is put together, it will be a loud representation of the many women and girls who have been murdered or gone missing. 

A regular jingle dress is typically worn by jingle dress dancers, who are seen as healers in Indigenous communities. 

McKellop has been the co-coordinator of the project for the past five months. She said she could see the potential of how far the project could be taken. 

“She’s such a good storyteller that I could envision it in my own head, and I could really see that this could go somewhere.” 

She said it can be a very controversial topic, but it is one that needs to be shared more. 

“It’s something that needs to be said and shared, I think that people that don’t know it, this may be their starting point to learning more.”  

The designer of the dress, Yvette McKenna, has made a mock-up version of the dress, for the team to use for inspiration and to test ideas. 

The project is currently still in the planning stage, and the team is figuring out how they’re going to get names onto the jingles and how to incorporate them into the dress. 

The team would like families of those affected to send in the names of MMIWG across Atlantic Canada to be put onto the jingles. 

Darlene Bernard is the Chief of Lennox Island First Nation on P.E.I. she said it gives her hope that there will be more public awareness about the issue. 

“What gives me hope is that we’re talking about it, as First Nations people as Mi’kmaq, we we’re never allowed to tell our stories or to talk about these things, but now we are,” she added. “Every family has a story, about someone who went missing or was taken away never to be saw again, residential school, 60’s scoop all of those things that played major roles in us losing our family members.” 

Bernard said she is looking forward to seeing the project when it’s completed. 

“Im really excited about the project, because I think when you have young women who are wanting to create awareness on a subject matter that’s really close and dear to a lot of people’s hearts and is a serious issue in the environment today.”