Photo: Carmen Weld

Kelowna's Women's Memorial Vigil in 2015.

While many will be celebrating Valentine’s Day this Sunday, others will be marking a more sombre occasion.

Two Kelowna post-secondary students are organizing Kelowna’s 5th annual Women’s Memorial Vigil to honour missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.

Mary Song and Tina Miller have both been personally affected by what they consider a national crisis. Miller, from the Nisga’a nation, experienced the loss of her mother’s friend by the hands of Robert Pickton.

“We will not forget her worth, her value or her life,” said Miller in a statement, adding that she is representative of each individual indigenous woman who is missing or has been murdered.

According to Statistics Canada, 16 per cent of women murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2014 were aboriginal. Aboriginal people made up 4.3 per cent of the Canadian population, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data from 2011.

While the national tragedy has been marked by demonstrations and marches on Feb. 14 across western Canada for years, this will be the first year the federal government has recognized the issue.

While the government under Stephen Harper refused to hold a national inquiry into the matter, the Liberal Party campaigned on a promise to launch such an inquiry, the first phase of which began in December.

The vigil will be held at noon at the Kelowna courthouse.

It will feature several speakers, including Pauline Terbasket, from the Okanagan Nation Alliance, city councillor Mohini Singh and Michelle Novakowski, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society.

The vigil will be followed by a light meal hosted by the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society at 442 Leon Ave at 2:30 p.m.