Shades of Our Sisters brings conversation, understanding to St. Michael’s – St. Michael’s

June 25, 2018

Patricia Carpenter was a daughter, sister and mother.

Her story is one that’s shared as part of Shades of Our Sisters, an installation that highlights the lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Transgender and Two-spirited People. On National Indigenous Peoples Day, St. Michael’s became the first hospital to host the exhibit.

“We started this as our thesis at Ryerson,” said executive producer Laura Heidenheim. “As media students, we saw there was terrible representation of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the media – lots of victim blaming. We wanted to shift the narrative, so we went to families of the women and asked them and it was their idea to tell the stories about their lives, not their deaths.”

The exhibit features snapshots of lives well lived. Patricia, who was just 14 when she was killed, spent years doting on her younger siblings and had a baby of her own six weeks before she died. Thirty-one-year-old Sonya Cywink was a poet – the installation includes videos of her sister reading some of her work.

Read More: http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/media/detail.php?source=hospital_news/2018/0625