Upcoming Closure Notice:

The Museum will be closed Tuesday, May 20th, 2025, due to the stat holiday. We will reopen Wednesday, May 21st, 2025.

If you drive by the museum, you’ll notice a display of red dresses on our lawn. Accompanying the display are several information panels.

Red Dress Day is also known as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People. The day honours and brings awareness to the thousands of Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people who have been subject to disproportionate violence in Canada. Métis artist Jaime Black began the REDress Project, an art installation, in 2010. Black gathered and hung hundreds of empty, red dresses to represent the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. We think of the families and survivors as we mourn. There is much more work to be done to end the violence. The red dresses are a visual reminder to remember, reflect and take action.

“How can one day be enough to reflect on the generations of Indigenous Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and 2-Spirited people who have been victims of senseless prejudicial violence and oppression, have lost their lives, and are still missing from their grieving families? It can’t. But…this is a start.” -Sarah Ritchie (Dufferin County Resident and Metis Nation of Ontario)

The Museum of Dufferin respectfully acknowledges that Dufferin County resides within the traditional territory and ancestral lands of the Tionontati (Pétun), Attawandaron (Neutral) Haudenosaunee (Six Nations), and Anishinaabe peoples.

We also acknowledge that various municipalities within the County of Dufferin reside within the treaty lands named under the Haldimand Deed of 1784 and two of the Williams Treaties of 1818: Treaty 18: the Nottawasaga Purchase, and Treaty 19: The Ajetance Treaty.

These traditional territories upon which we live and learn are steeped in rich Indigenous history and traditions. It is with this statement that we declare to honour and respect the past and present connection of Indigenous peoples with this land, its waterways and resources.