On a national day of awareness honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, the Ontario Native Women's Association (ONWA) has launched a new tool they hope will empower Indigenous women and end the violence against them.

The group's new website offers a place to share stories, information and tools to help the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the province.

"We've really seen community members demanding and needing resources to support looking for their loved one, or looking for how to begin to do healing in their own community, and to support a community development approach," said ONWA executive director Cora-Lee McGuire-Cyrette.

"We're hoping it to be a very interactive tool online to connect communities together, to connect family members to trauma-informed services across the province, as well as for communities to come up with their own vision for healing in creating safety in their community for women and children."

Both indigenous and non-indigenous people joined hands in a round dance at the University of Windsor Wednesday, as part of the national day of awareness.

Stephanie Pangowish, an Indigenous initiative representative and first-year law student, addressed the crowd. She said the dance is about the community coming together and connecting.

Stephanie Pangowish, an Indigenous initiative representative at the university said the round dance was about bringing people together. (Melissa Nakhavoly/CBC)

"Understand that Indigenous people are not the stereotype that has been portrayed. Understand that we are strong, beautiful, powerful people and one day we will take our rightful place in society and will be recognized as such."

ONWA hopes that their website will help to empower Indigenous women to take more leadership roles in communities across the province, as a way to educate those who are committing violence and those who are victims of it.

McGuire-Cyrette sees the website as a resource for families and communities that aren't able to participate in the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

"We looked at what was missing. We'd recognized and seen what the inquiry was going to do and not do. We've seen that communities' vision for the inquiry and expectations of the inquiry was not actually going to be set up to do the community healing on the ground that needed to happen. The actions were going to have to come from community," she said.

"Communities need to be equipped with tools and resources to help them do those actions. How do you host an event talking about violence? The violence in our communities and the sexual violence in our communities? To begin to have that conversation and dialogue and talk about it in a safe way."