On September 5, a friend messaged me: “Happy International Indigenous Women’s Day, Erin.”

I replied, “I didn’t even know about it.”

And this is coming from someone who lives and breathes in the cultural realm day in and day out. If I didn’t know, how many other people did?

To be fair, the recognition is new at the United Nations level. Indigenous organizations first established September 5 as the International Day of Indigenous Women in 1983, in honour of Aymara leader Bartolina Sisa, but 2026 marked the first time the United Nations formally observed the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Women and Girls.

That may explain why so few people have heard of it, but it also says something that recognition on this scale took more than four decades to arrive. How does a day intended to recognize Indigenous women pass with so little recognition that even many Indigenous women never hear about it? Well, isn’t that fitting? 🙄

Indigenous women have been made so invisible through colonization that even the day created to recognize us is largely overlooked.

For me, that is such a stark contrast to the importance Indigenous women held within our traditional societies. Every Nation had its own systems of governance and kinship, but whether a Nation was matrilineal, matriarchal or not— women held essential and respected roles. Our opinions mattered. Our leadership was crucial not only to the survival of our families and villages, but to the care and collective well-being of everyone. Women carried cultural knowledge, managed resources and helped determine how communities moved forward.

You can also see that importance in our traditional marriage practices, which is part of the work Andy and I are now sharing. Particularly within high-ranking cultural families, marriage was not simply a private relationship between two people. Families carefully sought matches that would bring two lineages together and strengthen both sides.

Each marriage could carry cultural prerogatives, names, histories, songs, dances, responsibilities and relationships forward to the next generation. The intention was not only to preserve what each family already carried, but to build upon it. One generation strengthened the next, creating children who inherited the cultural wealth, obligations and support of both sides.

Women were pivotal within that system. Marriage did not erase where a woman came from or make her culturally irrelevant. Her family, lineage, knowledge and prerogatives were part of what made the union valuable.

Colonization did not simply fail to understand these systems. It actively worked to dismantle them.

Colonial governments imposed Eurocentric patriarchy onto our Nations. The Indian Act replaced our governance systems with male-dominated structures and discriminated against Indigenous women in ways it did not discriminate against men. Women could lose their status, their community connections and their ability to pass their identity to their children simply because of whom they married.

Think about the violence of that reversal. In our traditional systems, marriage could expand a woman’s connections and strengthen future generations. Under the Indian Act, marriage could legally sever an Indigenous woman from her own people.

Once Indigenous women were separated from their lands, families, authority and traditional systems of protection, the door was opened to their full exploitation. The stereotypes created to justify that exploitation remain with us: the disposable woman, the promiscuous woman, the woman no one will look for, the woman whose disappearance will not be taken seriously.

The ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is one of the most obvious indicators we have at just how diminished we are in the eyes of society at large. The National Inquiry found that the violence Indigenous women and girls experience is rooted in persistent human and Indigenous rights violations, colonialism and institutional neglect. We live in a system that deliberately strips Indigenous women of their standing and then judges our inevitable vulnerability as though it is something inherently wrong with us.

Indigenous women were never insignificant. We were made invisible by systems that benefited from our oppression.

I raised my daughter Marlo (shown in the cover photo) to recognize her own strength and her connection to her culture before all else, so she would always know who she is and what she carries - myself as first-born granddaughter to her generation- Marlo is also first-born granddaughter in our Matrilineal line.

Maybe the fact that so few of us even heard about International Indigenous Women’s Day should tell us something. Recognition cannot be limited to a barely acknowledged date on the calendar. It must also mean restoring the voices, leadership, safety and authority Indigenous women have always carried.

We were never throwaway women. We were, and remain, foundational to our families, our Nations and everything our people will carry forward.