Course:The Red River of the North

Content Note: mention of racialized violence (no depiction)

Located in Manitoba and flowing north to Hudson’s Bay, The Red River or ᒥᐦᑳᐧᑲᒦᐤ ᓰᐱ or mihkwâkamîw-sîpiy rushes through Winnipeg and my hometown of Selkirk, Manitoba. The Forks, a place where the Assiniboine River and Red River meet in Winnipeg, was a major trading route for the Nakoda, Cree, Anishinaabe, Dakota since time immemorial and then later for European fur traders and the Métis. My ancestors used this river (as my living relatives still do) for their livelihoods. People fish pickerel (white fish or walleye) from the Red and my own grandfather was a subsistence fisherman on the river. People fish all year round and the river freezes enough that you can drive a truck onto it in winter. I’m inspired by how life giving this river is, how it has created thousands of years of community. I’m also full of grief because The Red is a site for many Indigenous people’s deaths. Often people are discarded in its waters because of its proximity to the downtown core of the city. This triggered the Indigenous community of Winnipeg to create their own task force outside the police called The Bear Clan Patrol to keep people in the North End of Winnipeg and the downtown core safe. A film called this river” by Erika MacPherson and Katherena Vermette, explores this kind of mutual aid and volunteer coordination on The Red in the search for missing persons in Winnipeg.

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