Highway 16 in northern British Columbia is infamous as the stretch of highway on which Indigenous women, girls, and kin have gone missing for decades. The National Inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls released a final report in 2019 called Reclaiming Power and Place with 231 Calls to Justice.

These Calls to Justice were steps, protocols, and actions that the Canadian government could do to help end the cycle of violence.

Most recently, Call to Justice 15 was announced to begin: Mobility for Good for Indigenous Women at Risk. This is a new program that provides free smartphones and data plans to Indigenous women who are at risk or who are surviving violence. While Indigenous women and girls comprise only 4 per cent of the total female population in Canada, they represent 24 per cent of female homicide victims, and are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than other women.

This alarming statistic is a part of life for Indigenous kin in this country. The implementation of "man-camps" for mining work, pipeline work and other industries in Indigenous territory also has a history of violence. Most recently, an alert was passed around from LNG Canada about a violent sub-contractor who had attempted to pick up young Indigenous women as escorts with a record of drugging and beating the women he picked up in the past.

The Matriarchs in Training shared that bulletin to help pass the word about this man's history and a photo of his face. That post went viral on social media and included many comments of thanks from women and kin for sharing this information, as it was not picked up by many media outlets.

That is the kind of grassroots work the Matriarchs do: they target a specific point in the community (most often unceded Tsimshian territories also known as Terrace, BC) and use their network to share important safety messages as well as bolster goodwill in the community.

CICK News spoke with Hilary Lightening, a Matriarch in Training, about their work in the community and what this latest Call To Justice means for kin in along Highway 16: