Moose Hide Campaign marks ten years as a national event

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the Moose Hide Campaign, a national grassroots movement dedicated to ending violence against Indigenous women and children.

Sage Lacerte, from the Carrier Nation, has served as the National Youth Ambassador for the Moose Hide Campaign since 2018. 

“(It’s) a grassroots movement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and boys who stand up against violence towards women and children in Canada,” she says.

Since the Victoria-based organization was founded in 2011, it has distributed more than two million moose hide pins and engaged more than 2,000 communities across the country, says Lacerte.

The moose hide pins, most often worn by men, represent a commitment to respect and to protect Indigenous women and children year-round.

This year, campaign founders say the work is especially important, as domestic violence has risen 30 per cent in some Canadian regions since quarantine began— and Indigenous women are three times more likely to experience domestic violence than non-Indigenous women.

On Moose Hide Campaign Day, Feb. 11, a national event is held and there’s an invitation for men to join in a fast, as a way to deepen their personal commitment to the cause.

This year, speeches and workshops will be held online to commemorate the event. It will follow another “Unessay” competition event on Feb. 10 that Moosehide Campaign is collaborating on with the University of Victoria to promote creative expression in academics, outside of traditional essay writing.

Lacerte has a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Gender Studies at UVic and is one of the contest’s judges.

“We want to see folks favour sculpture, film, visual art, poetry, and any of these forms of media that students don’t necessarily engage themselves in, especially in humanities, which is so essay-heavy,” she says.

Some of the project pitches that have made the top ten explains Lacerta are a video game with alternate storytelling options, a Freudian painting, a puzzle and “a scarf that is apparently so heavy that an individual can’t pick it up themselves.”

UVic has had a long-standing relationship with the Moose Hide Campaign, Lacerte adds. 

“It’s nice to be able to have a home institution where I can go and share that message where there is community behind me,” she says.