Bringing Awareness of MMIW (Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women)

At the end of January, I attended an opening for an Art Exhibit at UW Whitewater's Crossman Gallery, called, "Stolen Sisters".  The art featured was meant to bring awareness of MMIW  (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women).
 Thousands upon thousands women and girls have gone missing for years, some found murdered, some still not found after years and years of searching.
Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities - in both the US and Canada - have fought to bring awareness to this connection between sex trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the women who go missing and turn up murdered.
Indigenous women and girls are being taken in an alarming way.  Native American women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than other ethnicities and it's the third leading cause of death for them (Centers for Disease Control).  The majority of these murders are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. Because of the lack of communication between state, local, and tribal law enforcement, it's difficult to begin the investigation process.  Many times when Indigenous women and girls go missing, or when Indigenous murder victims are unidentified, forensic evidence has not been accurately collected or preserved by local law enforcement. Cases have been allowed to quickly go "cold", and crucial evidence has been "lost", or never forwarded on from local law enforcement to the appropriate agencies.

The red hand over her mouth 
symbolizes the inability of many victims 
to speak for themselves

According to the National Crime Information Center, 5,712 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016 alone, but only 116 of those cases were logged with the Department of Justice. Violence against Native American women is much less likely to be reported or prosecuted than violence against non-Native women.

Beginnings, on the workbench

My Shadow Box assemblage installation is also meant to bring awareness of what is an almost invisible epidemic, and hopefully helping to make Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls visible!
This assemblage will be featured at the Art as Prayer Show at Christ Episcopal Church, Delavan, WI, March 18 - 22, 2020.