Red Dress Day is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2-Spirit People (MMIWG2S+). Beginning in Canada in 2010, it is now observed across America and Mexico annually on May 5th. As a congregation, we will observe Red Dress Day on Mother’s Day (May 10) in acknowledgment of those who lost mothers or never had the chance to embrace motherhood due to the historical and ongoing violence against our Indigenous siblings.
A variety of factors (including confusing laws between tribal, federal, and state law enforcement that often allow non-Native perpetrators to evade justice, particularly for crimes committed on reservations1) play into the fact that American Indian and Alaska Native women experience a murder rate 10 times higher than the national average.2 Because LSLC takes seriously our mission of bringing healing, help and hope to the world, our ministry of eagerly welcoming all and our baptismal promise of striving for justice and peace in all the earth,3 we acknowledge and repent of our hesitancy in speaking up, and we strive to do better. Too, we acknowledge that state of North Carolina4 and the land on which our building sits belonged to others before us.
In November 2024, this LSLC Land Acknowledgement was developed:
The building of Living Saviour Lutheran Church, and the larger area surrounding it, is located on the original and ancestral homelands of the Catawba, Cheraw, Sugaree and Waxhaw people. We acknowledge their presence here since time immemorial, and we honor those who lived here before this congregation, or this city, came to be, who were the first stewards of the land, the first people who offered the first prayers and sang the first songs into the very soil under our feet.
North Carolina has a long history of treaty negotiations, land use conflict, immigrant settlement, and federal administration. In order for us to move toward healing and a more just future together, it is imperative that we remember this history, listen to the stories of those we have wounded, confess our complacency and the systemic greed from which we have benefited and work with our Indigenous siblings to do better.
God give us wisdom and courage ~
+ Pr. Sara
1 Statistics show that over 90% of Native victims have a non-Native perpetrator:
2 https://www.niwrc.org/mmiwr-awareness
3 ELW, p. 236
4 You may read the NC synod Land Acknowledgement here: