Indigenous artist Jackie Traverse teams up with students to create mural

A prominent Indigenous artist has teamed up with students in The Pas to create a mural bringing attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Artist Jackie Traverse has been working on the mural for the past week with students at Mary Duncan School in The Pas, Man.

The mural is a series of four pieces, each one depicting an Indigenous woman in a red dress covered in flowers. One of the women in the mural honours Kendara Ballantyne, an 18-year-old girl who was found dead in The Pas in 2019. RCMP have deemed her death a homicide.

Read More: Walk to honour Kendara Ballantyne five years after death

“Kendara, she liked canaries, so I’m going to put a little canary here looking at her,” Traverse said.

Traverse said she wanted to bring attention to MMIWG2S+ without focussing on a red handprint – a prominent symbol of the violence Indigenous women have faced in North America.

“I find it triggering myself, so I just wanted something to honour the connection of women and land, and home and community, and the beauty of our women,” Traverse told CTV News.

The mural is part of a 10-year project in the northern community.

Gabrielle Swan helps run The Pas Guest List, a social nonprofit organization that raises funds for artistic endeavors within the community. The organization is working to install 20 murals over 10 years along a walking path that has fallen into disrepair.

“People weren't really using it. It was home to a lot of vandalism, and we wanted to use art to revive the area,” she said.

Traverse’s mural is the fourth addition to the project.

“As someone who's extremely well regarded in the art world, we wanted to, of course, work with her,” Swan said. “One of the missions of our organization is to really focus on empowering youth. So we wanted to give students an opportunity to collaborate with somebody of Jackie's talents.”

She said the students at Mary Duncan School have been excited to work with Traverse on the project. It’s a new experience for Traverse as well to be working collaboratively with the students.

As she was preparing for the work, she told CTV News her strategy for the project.

“Let them go wild, let them paint it any way they want,” Traverse said. “To have their creative input with my work is going to be, it's going to be fabulous.”

The mural is set to be installed on Monday – the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Swan said to install Traverse’s mural on this day is a true honour.

“It's really important in our community that we have art reflecting what life is, and unfortunately MMIWG2S+ is a real thing here and many, many, many families are impacted by that,” Swan said.

“We wanted to do something to make sure that those people are feeling seen and heard, and that they know that we stand beside them.”