Native women have been disappearing and facing murder for decades (if not centuries) in the United States and Canada, but there has been little widespread attention given to this national, if not international crisis. In 2016, Canada announced they would begin investigating the disappearances and murders of indigenous women, but the United States has yet to acknowledge the problem in the main stream.
Angela Two Stars of the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux nation decided to curate an exhibition called Bring Her Home: Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island, a group show of 18 native women artists talking about either their personal experience or connection to family who has experienced sexual assault or murder, or have disappearance without a trace. Seeing how this widespread experience for Native women has been swept under the rug by the US government, have you ever heard about this? What do you think we can do to start investigating on a national level? How can art play a role in healing the individuals, families, and communities that have faced this devastating reality? Below are links to an article about the exhibit titled Native Women Honor Those Lost to Violence Through Art by Sheila Regan, as well as a chapter titled Relocation Revisited: Sex Trafficking of Native Women from The Beginning and End of Rape, by Sarah Deer that addresses sexual exploitation of native women beginning with colonization. I would highly recommend later reading the whole book, because, as Sheila Regan points out in her article, there is insufficient data kept by institutions about missing indigenous women, and Deer compiles her information about native women's experience by research and collecting anecdotal evidence from native women themselves.
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