Native Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters Are Missing
By: Kelly Vaughan
Tags: Feminism, Diversity, Equality, Justice, Art

It’s time to address the disproportionately high number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States and Canada. Missing and murdered Indigenous women are and have been ignored. Violence against Native women occurs at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population. While the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is seen as a milestone, protective of women, and a recourse for justice, it is not providing much protection for Native women.

“In 2018, more than two dozen Indigenous women went missing in rural parts of Montana. It is hard to say how many have gone missing nationally, due to limited resources and poor data collection. On a wider scale, the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) identified 506 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Spanning across 71 U.S. cities, UIHI identified 128 (25 percent) were missing person cases, 280 (56 percent) were murder cases, and 98 (19 percent) had an unknown status.” — Civic Nation

A stretch of highway in British Columbia has been named the Highway of Tears because of the substantial number of Indigenous women who are missing or have been murdered there. When we are naming places based on a crime rate, that ought to be a wakeup call, and a call to action.

Indigenous women are up against two significant disadvantages. Crimes against women are considered secondarily significant (or insignificant), and crimes against Indigenous people in North America have been treated with disregard for over 400 years. With these two factors working against them Native women do not experience the attention and justice the crimes require.

About 27 percent of Arizona is tribal land, and it is far less likely that crimes committed there will be prosecuted.

“Consider that more than 80% of Native American and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetimes, and 96% of these survivors experience this violence at the hands of a non-Native perpetrator. Between 2005 and 2009, roughly 67% of the sexual abuse and related offenses committed in Indian country were left unprosecuted by the federal government.” — azcentral.

Contacting Senators and urging them to vote for legislation such as Savanna’s Act that directs the Department of Justice to develop and implement protocols that address the violence against Native women is a way that citizens can positively impact their future and safety.

Artist Jonathan Labillois created a painting that depicts an Onkwehón: we woman wearing a dress made up of hundreds of missing women posters. Art combined with activism can have a powerful effect on attitudes, awareness, and action. Seeing the faces of women who have families that love and miss them is important to keep them from being dismissed as only an anonymous statistic. Hopefully, it makes it more difficult to dismiss them as not real or important.

The REDress Project is a continuing installation that is a response to and seeks to draw attention to missing native women in the US and Canada. Red dresses are hung in various locations to commemorate losses.

Many artists are activists through their creativity. Their public expression is vital to the human community that seeks justice and social change. Creating art, advocating with legislators, monitoring law enforcement so that cases aren’t allowed to go cold, and working toward making safer communities are some ways to instigate a decline in the violence against Native women. These women’s lives meant something. Do something.