More than 100 empty chairs covered in white linen were set up in the lobby of Tommy Douglas House near the legislative building on Monday morning, to make a
Each chair represents one of the long term missing person’s files still open in Saskatchewan.
Most missing person’s cases are solved quickly and without incident, but some go back years or even decades.
To bring attention to those cases, government, police and other agencies launched the fourth annual Missing Persons Week in Saskatchewan with the theme “Missing but not forgotten.”
The president of the Saskatchewan Association of Police Chiefs, Marlo Pritchard, says any lead is a valuable lead.
“Of course these events just bring back into the memory of everyone the names and the situations out there,” he said. “We try to remind people to dig back into their memories because maybe someone out there has some information that might help us find some of these missing people.”
Lorraine Yuzicappi, an elder from the Standing Buffalo First Nation delivered the opening prayer at the proclamation. Her granddaughter, Amber Redman, went missing in 2005 but it took two years before her body was found.
Yuzicappi’s great-granddaughter Rachel has been missing for two years.
“Oh, I get emotional because when it is close to you, it’s hard, it’s really hard,” she said.
“The elders tell us just to continue to pray, pray in all directions, make that circle, pray to the Creator, pray to Grandmother Earth that they will all help us.”
There are 123 long-term missing person files in Saskatchewan, some dating back forty years.
At 46 per cent, nearly half of all missing persons cases involve aboriginals, and 73 per cent of the victims are men.