The Safe Space support group is facilitated by myself, Kawiria Creed, and Sita Rebizant, and we are two women of colour in a predominately white rural town. We have both experienced frequent racism and microaggressions and have previously felt alone in those experiences. Our goal is to provide a regular meeting environment where other people of colour can come to freely share what has happened to them without being judged, for the benefit of their mental health. And so we meet every 2nd & 4th Tuesday, welcoming both old and young, marginalized individuals and allies.
Getting this project started was a slow process, as we had to figure out a time and location to meet that would be suitable for the people we wanted to offer this Safe Space to. It was also not easy to put ourselves out there in this way but we both felt strongly about the need to get past our fears of being targeted and offer this space to others in our community who may have gone through similar experiences of racism, whether online or in person.
Thus far, we have not had high attendance, but it’s been enough to feel inspired to keep going. We have brainstormed about different ways to reach people, including advertising in the local newspaper and on the town’s Facebook page. We also created a brochure about our group, which we have distributed around town.
We reached out to the local North Thompson Aboriginal Cultural Center, and were grateful that they offered their center as a meeting place, for a reasonable fee. A limitation is that it had to be at 2pm, which is their closing time on Tuesdays. For those who work during the day and can’t make it to our 2pm meetings, we are considering other ways of connecting. We have talked about other events we could offer, such as community dinners, picnics or multi cultural festivals.
In addition to sharing their space, the Aboriginal community invited the Safe Space group to participate in the annual Truth and Reconciliation event, that took place on September 30, 2025. For this, we were able to prepare information and materials that helped those who attended the event to learn more about who we are and why we exist. We incorporated information about the effects of European colonization on the collective, and the intergenerational trauma that our world is dealing with today, into our presentation and highlighted the importance of having a safe space where we can share our stories without being judged or silenced, in order to heal and move forward.
At the Tuesday meetings, we have had several Caucasian community members attend, who were curious to learn more about being allies and open to learning more about our experiences as people of color. It has been an overall encouraging experience and we hope to see the group grow as we continue to hold the space. We have both noticed the healing effect of sharing our own stories at the meetings and receiving support and solidarity from those present.
One of our more recent ideas was to create short video clips to share on social media, which would present certain micro aggressions or awkward moments in daily life with people of color and how they could be handled in a more culturally sensitive way. We have realized that a lot of people are simply unaware of the impact of their words and actions with BIPOC, so our aim is to raise awareness and hopefully prevent these – often painful – situations from occurring. So far, we have a few scripts written and are excited to get started recording!
