Moose Hide Campaign Creates Change

A friend gave my partner a little card with a square of moose hide pinned to it.  She got it at a Heather Rankin concert in Midland and thought that my partner would like it.  On the card, he learned that it was part of the Moose Hide Campaign.  He told me about it and I went looking on-line to learn more.

Raven and Paul Lacerte speaking at Me to We day

The Moose Hide Campaign started in 2011 when Paul Lacerte and his sixteen-year-old daughter Raven were hunting for moose in their traditional territory near the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. The Highway of Tears is a 724 km stretch of the Yellowhead Highway 16 in British Columbia where many women, mostly Indigenous have disappeared or have been found murdered.  (Canadian Encyclopedia)

CBC website

As Raven and Paul were preparing the moose that they got, they were talking about the many Indigenous women had been murdered or had disappeared on that highway.  They got the idea to have the moose hide tanned and cut into little squares that they could distribute to men so that they could show their commitment to stand up against violence towards women and children.

The card that comes with the square reads:

The Moose Hide Campaign is a grassroots movement of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Men who are standing up against violence towards women and children.

Wearing this moose hide signifies your commitment to honour, respect, and protect the women and children in your life and to work together with other men to end violence against women and children.

Our vision is to spread the Moose Hide Campaign to organizations, communities, and governments throughout Canada.

You can see Raven and Paul tell the story of this campaign began here:  

Once a year the Moose Hide Campaign has a gathering in BC and they ask men across Canada to fast for one day with them, to show their commitment to working towards ending violence against women and children.  Their goal is to have one million men across Canada fasting together.

So far, they have distributed over half of a million squares of moose hide.  They have a presence in over 250 communities, colleges and universities.

On the day of the gathering, each year, the MLA’s of the provincial government of BC  wear the moose hide patches and make a statement inside the legislature.  Then they come outside and stand with the Moose Hide Campaign and discuss how men can be engaged in being part of the solution.

Their mission is described on the website with these statements:

·        We will stand up with women and children and we will speak out against violence towards them.

·        We will support each other as men and we will hold each other accountable.

·        We will teach our young boys about the true meaning of love and respect, and we will be healthy role models for them.

·        We will heal ourselves as men and we will support our brothers on their healing journey.

·        We encourage you to Take Action, Make the Pledge and Stand up to end violence towards women and children.

  

  The website made it easy to order patches to distribute.  So we ordered 100 and my partner began speaking at gatherings such as the local film festival, open mics, and the field naturalist meeting, handing out moose hide squares to men who were interested and women who wanted to give them to the men in their lives.  He also mailed some to his family members and handed them out to friends so that they could share them with their friends.  The squares went fast, so we ordered another hundred.  We keep on thinking of places that he can speak and include more men in being part of the solution.  My partner tells me that sometimes women come to thank him for speaking out about this issue and that some of them have tears in their eyes.  

The moose hide pieces are free and can be ordered here. You can also make donations to this campaign.  Here is a youtube videos of Indigenous men speaking about why this campaign is so important.

Although this campaign has been in existence for five years, it only just found us.  And the timing couldn’t be better.  In the face of daily revelations about how men have abused their power in the entertainment industry and politics and reports from the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Inquiry, some men are relieved to have a way of showing their support for this human issue.  They can go on-line and learn more, they can begin to have conversations with each other and they can influence boys and teens.  There is room for all of us as we work to change this story.