During the months of October and November, the Communications Team worked on a variety of content and campaigns to further NWAC’s advocacy work and objectives to support and uplift Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, transgender, and gender-diverse (WG2STGD) people.
In October, we released edition 21 of the Kci-Niwesq magazine. This edition focused on the history of NWAC, from its founding in 1974, as well as on the broader Indigenous women’s rights movement. It featured commentary from former NWAC President Jeanette Corbiere Lavell, who shared her decades-long fight to regain status, which took her all the way to the Supreme Court.
The magazine also featured a story on the origins of the Sisters in Sirit Vigil and how families of MMIWG2S+ people have found resilience, strength, and solidarity in coming together to remember and commemorate their lost loved ones.
We created a Social Innovation Ventures page on the website that brought together many different NWAC business entities to provide an overview and promote our new ventures, including meeting room rentals, the café and catering services, our boutique, and art sales and gallery.
NWAC issued a press release on October 4 congratulating Wab Kinew on his historic election as Premier of Manitoba—the first First Nations premier of a province of Canada.
On November 2, NWAC released a press release responding to the findings of the Zinger Report, which concluded that the over-incarceration of Indigenous women (50% of federally incarcerated women are Indigenous) is a human rights travesty. NWAC echoed Dr. Zinger’s call for immediate action to address this inequality.
On November 27, NWAC issued a press release announcing that NWAC delegates would be attending the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which runs from November 28 to November 30. Gena Edwards, an environmental activist from Ts’kw’aylaxw First Nation in British Columbia and NWAC’s First Vice President, along with Lisa J. Smith, an Inuk lawyer and Interim advisor to NWAC President Carol McBride, will both be at the annual international forum.
To commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of Indigenous veterans, NWAC produced an information booklet about notable Indigenous soldiers, aviators, and sailors who helped keep Canada safe and secured their place in the history books. These war-time heroes included Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture, Dorothy Askwith, and Mary Greyeyes. Social media posts also helped highlight these brave Indigenous veterans and helped promote Indigenous Veterans Day as a day of recognition and remembrance.
We produced a report detailing NWAC’s recent Going Global work in Guatemala. The report summarized CEO Lynne Groulx’s international work across the Americas to continue essential relationship building between NWAC and the eight nations that make up the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, or SICA). Each mission includes opportunities to build connections with both government representatives and entrepreneurs to foster economic growth for Indigenous Peoples across the continents. Social media posts were created to highlight the objectives and achieved goals of the international Going Global missions.
On November 25, NWAC marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on our social media channels, including the use of a banner to raise awareness. The campaign will run until December 10, to commemorate 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, culminating on International Human Rights Day. Posts during this time reflected on the startling statistics concerning violence against Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, transgender, and gender-diverse people as human rights violations. These posts directed our audience to the UN’s UNiTE campaign to learn more about this important initiative.
Social Media
During the month of October, our social media accounts saw a significant rise in audience engagement—up 175.7%. We also grew our audience by 41% across different platforms.
A NWAC post that shared artwork from Soni López-Chávez (@soni_artist) with the text If trauma can be passed down through generations, then so can healing received our highest interaction for October, with 34,916 total engagements and a reach of 474,982. This post inspired discussion, with our audience leaving 881 comments.
Also in October, we published 305 social media posts across our platforms, including X.com (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
In November, our most viewed post was a motivational quote paired with a beautiful image of Indigenous artwork by Eloy Bida, which received a reach of 879,623. At the time of reporting, there were 461 posts published in November, with a spike in video views up 294% noted midway through the month compared to a similar time period in the previous month. This month, NWAC social media accounts gained an audience net growth of 150.9%.
Follow us on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on all of NWAC’s initiatives and be sure to subscribe to our magazine, Kci-Niwesq.