These Haunting Red Dresses Memorialize Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women

[mia]

On a steel-gray winter day, the red dresses each hung, flapping in the wind along the plaza surrounding the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian—35 of them—in different shapes, sizes and shades. They serve as stand-ins for the potentially thousands of native women who go missing or are murdered each year. There is no definitive tally due to the tangled nature of jurisprudence in and around Indian Country. Law enforcement and sometimes the general public are indifferent. And resources to more fully document the fates of these women is lacking.

Native women are disproportionately affected by violence. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice estimated that 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime compared to 71 percent of non-Hispanic white women.

In 2016, 5,712 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing, which is likely the tip of the iceberg, since only 116 were officially recorded in the U.S. Department of Justice’s missing persons database, according to a 2018 study by the Urban Indian Health Institute, a division of the Seattle Indian Health Board.

The notion that there is so much silence around the deaths and disappearances of so many native women is excruciating to Jaime Black. The Winnipeg, Manitoba-based artist—a member of the Métis Tribe—created the REDress Project as an expression of her grief and her feeling of connectedness to fellow indigenous women....

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/these-haunting-red-dresses-memorialize-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women-180971730/#HqQ5SY75hrUXLeH8.99

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[MontanaMama]

2. K&R

We are missing many indigenous women and girls in Montana. It’s not okay.

[Wounded Bear]

3. K & R...for visibility...nt

[KT2000]

4. this is stunning

what is going on that this can not be figured out. It is a disgrace that this is happening to so many women.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Kicked and recommended. nt

[lillypaddle]

6. K&R

outrage

tears

[NBachers]

7. I read a lot of atrocious unacceptable shit, but, somehow, this one punches me right in the gut

and fills my eyes with tears. Hard emotions for me to handle . . .

[Judi Lynn]

8. Unbelievably brutal considering how little is done by the gov't to find the killers.

It's important to remember that South Dakota's Congressman Bill Janklow was elected, and served in Congress long AFTER it was well known he had raped a young indigenous woman in South Dakota and was not checked by the law there. Of course he was a Republican.

There was also a very worthwhile article posted at D.U. in February by niyad, here:
"Violence Against Native American Women"
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016226522

Mia, that imagery is stark, and so immediate, in a way no other medium could touch people. It really personalizes what people might otherwise just see as words on a screen, or in a newspaper.

Thank you, very much.

[mia]

10. The Red Dress Project has become a grassroots movement in Canada.

People have have hung read dresses in their yards and along the highways. It makes a powerful statement.

[mia]

11. You're welcome, Judi Lynn

Thank you for the link to niyad's "Violence Against Native American Women" thread.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016226522

[niyad]

9. k and r for visibility

[mia]

12. In honor of the deaths and disappearances of native women