Bridget Tolley awarded King Charles III medal for work with MMIWG (2025)

Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin woman from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg in Quebec, walked to the front of the room to receive the King Charles III Coronation Medal.

In her hands was a long cloth banner, handmade, worn at the edges and deeply personal.

It was the same one she had carried for nearly 15 years, stitched by her friend Kristen Catnip in 2011, the year Tolley founded Families of Sisters in Spirit, a grassroots group that advocates for Indigenous families whose loved ones have been a victim of violence.

“ I love to bring that banner with me because Kristen’s been with me for almost two decades now and because she doesn’t always make it with me to events,” Tolley said. “I bring it because that way I know she’s with me. It’s a part of both of us.”

Tolley was one of 30 Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ individuals chosen by Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak (LFMO), a national Métis women’s organization, to receive the medal in recognition of lifetime service.

The organization’s president, Melanie Omeniho, herself a recipient, had been approached by the governor general’s office with an invitation to distribute 20 medals.

She asked for more.

They gave her 30.

“We selected people who don’t often get acknowledged for the work that they do,” Omeniho said.

One of those recipients was Brenda White, a Métis woman from Prince Albert, Sask., who has spent her life working in housing.

She helped design Miakoda, a transitional home for women and children escaping violence. The building is still under construction, but the plan is in place. Families will have 18 months of secure housing, cultural programs, and community connections.

“Brenda gives of herself selflessly,” Omeniho said. “She supports people who are hard to house, and she’s been a key part of this project from the beginning.”

Other recipients included Sylvia McAdam, co-founder of Idle No More; Lisa Monchalin, the first Indigenous woman in Canada to earn a Ph.D. in criminology; Jennifer Adese, a Canada Research Chair focused on Métis women and politics; Elder Veda Weselake, a long-time advocate in Indigenous governance and education and Sheila Andrews, known for her advocacy for 2SLGBTQQIA+ rights in Prince Albert.

And then there was Tolley.

Omeniho had marched beside her, shared ceremony, watched her bring food to strangers, gifts to Elders, and ensured protocol was respected at every gathering.

“ She doesn’t have an organization behind her, she has no funding of any kind at all. And, as we continued similar programming and advocacy, we got to know Bridget better,” Omeniho said.

“ She puts these things together with little or no resources whatsoever. And, if there’s anybody that I’ve ever seen that puts her heart and soul into something, even in spite of all the pain that she suffers, it’s her.”

Tolley’s journey to that stage in Ottawa began on a night in October 2001, when her mother, Gladys Tolley, was struck and killed by a Sûreté du Québec police cruiser while crossing Hwy 105 in Kitigan Zibi.

The family never received the answers they sought. Tolley has always maintained that the investigation was mishandled.

In the years that followed, as other families across the country began organizing, marching in Vancouver, releasing reports through Amnesty International and documenting disappearances through the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), Tolley focused on visibility.

It was her idea to bring families together to hold vigils that would maintain public pressure and political attention. When the federal government declined to renew funding for NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit program in 2010, families were left to carry the work themselves.

Tolley stepped in. She reorganized the network into Families of Sisters in Spirit and continued, even as the infrastructure around her collapsed.

At one point, she tried to build a regional network in eastern Canada but found it impossible to sustain without financial support. Still, she kept going.

Her granddaughter Ava, 10 years old at the time, spoke at a recent vigil. Tolley invited her to the medal ceremony and later handed her the medal.

“Just to see what happens when you do work,” she said.

In 2019, the government, under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, set up the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The inquiry released an action plan in 2021.

The last progress report was released two years ago, although meetings continue. One was held in January in Ottawa.

In 2022, three Quebec ministers issued a formal apology to Tolley’s family for how they were treated the night her mother died. The Kitigan Zibi Police did not attend.

“They took off to a graduation instead of coming,” Tolley said.

Despite those events, Tolley emphasized that not much has changed. The national group working on the action plan is not in touch with her or the families she supports.

“We’re still where we were at the beginning,” she said. “Families are still doing their own investigations. Nobody wants to listen to us.”

Tolley, who just turned 65, has now been involved with the movement for 24 years.

She intends to return to Parliament Hill and hold another vigil—scheduled for May 5, after the federal election.

“This is very important to me,” she said. “It is hard some days to do this. But I can’t give up.

“ I’m just so very thankful to be here, and I’m gonna do everything I can, everything I possibly can to try and help other families, and we just gotta get this right now. It’s time for true justice accountability all the way around, let’s go do this in a circle.”

A full list of recipients of the medal is here: King Charless III Medals