On December 6, 2019 we remember the 14 (fourteen) female engineering students at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal who were murdered in 1989 by an act of gender-based violence. On this date we commemorate the lives of all women who have experienced gender-based violence.

Speaker bio:

Tasha Beeds is a scholar of nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Metis, and Barbadian ancestry from the Treaty 6 territories of Saskatchewan. She is a professor, a creative artist, a poet, a Water Walker, and a Midewiwin woman. The Midewiwin are an Indigenous medicine society who utilize Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies, and methodologies to address various social, mental, emotional, and physical issues that impact Indigenous people while actively bringing healing through the realm of spiritual ceremonies. 

Tasha has lived, academic, and community experience in relation to violence against Indigenous women and girls and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, trans-women, two-spirited, and gender fluid people. She worked on the National Film Board documentary Finding Dawn, one of the first films to draw attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Trans and 2 Spirited People (MMIWGT2S) and she participated in Walking with Our Sisters the collaborative art instillation memorializing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Throughout her academic and community work, Tasha asserts Indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world that continue to survive colonization. These indigenous ways of knowing are of tremendous value and need to be shared: to help not only Indigenous people, but all people – as well as the Lands, Waters and entities that rely upon them.