ARTISTS
We Stand With You: Contemporary Artists Honor The Families Of The Missing And Murdered Indigenous Relative Crisis
While this crisis first focused on Indigenous women and girls, numerous murders and disappearances of LGBTQ+/ Two Spirit people and men make this a broader issue inseparable from generational legacies of forced removal, land seizures, and violence. While women still are targeted the majority of the time, MAM uses Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, or the acronym MMIR, though it is common to see MMIW, MMIWG, MMIP, and MMIX as well.
When confronted with the individual stories, much less the statistics, the enormity of this crisis is overwhelming. Tribal people have disproportionately high rates of assault, rape, abduction, and murder. Indigenous women are 4 times as likely to go missing, murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average, and homicide is one of the leading causes of death for young Indigenous women, with sexual assault occurring at a much higher rate and with more serious consequences than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. In 2021, the Montana Missing Persons Clearinghouse listed 179 active missing person cases, with 57, or 32%, of them identified as Indigenous. Indigenous people make up 6.9% of the state's population. According to the FBI's National Crime Information Center, in 2020 alone there were 5,295 Indigenous women and 4,276 Indigenous men reported missing across the United States.
Hanna Harris (Tsis tsis'tas [Northern Cheyenne]) was murdered in 2013. Hanna鈥檚 Act was established by the 66th Montana legislature in 2018, authorizing the Department of Justice to assist local law enforcement in missing persons cases. Harris鈥� birthday, May 5 is observed as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day and President Joe Biden declared May 5th as National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, issuing an Executive Order to prioritize the crisis of MMIR.
To get involved, consider donating to the Sovereign Bodies Institute who excels at MMIR advocacy and maintains the largest MMIR database.
We Stand With You, guest curated by Rachel Allen (Nimiipuu [Nez Perce]), takes place in the Lynda M. Frost Contemporary American Indian Art Gallery. This gallery is dedicated to exclusively exhibiting and programming work by contemporary Native artists. MAM is situated on the traditional, ancestral territories of the S茅li拧 and Ql虛isp茅 peoples. Exhibitions like this are one of the ways that the museum honors and recognizes this relationship.
While this crisis first focused on Indigenous women and girls, numerous murders and disappearances of LGBTQ+/ Two Spirit people and men make this a broader issue inseparable from generational legacies of forced removal, land seizures, and violence. While women still are targeted the majority of the time, MAM uses Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, or the acronym MMIR, though it is common to see MMIW, MMIWG, MMIP, and MMIX as well.
When confronted with the individual stories, much less the statistics, the enormity of this crisis is overwhelming. Tribal people have disproportionately high rates of assault, rape, abduction, and murder. Indigenous women are 4 times as likely to go missing, murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average, and homicide is one of the leading causes of death for young Indigenous women, with sexual assault occurring at a much higher rate and with more serious consequences than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. In 2021, the Montana Missing Persons Clearinghouse listed 179 active missing person cases, with 57, or 32%, of them identified as Indigenous. Indigenous people make up 6.9% of the state's population. According to the FBI's National Crime Information Center, in 2020 alone there were 5,295 Indigenous women and 4,276 Indigenous men reported missing across the United States.
Hanna Harris (Tsis tsis'tas [Northern Cheyenne]) was murdered in 2013. Hanna鈥檚 Act was established by the 66th Montana legislature in 2018, authorizing the Department of Justice to assist local law enforcement in missing persons cases. Harris鈥� birthday, May 5 is observed as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day and President Joe Biden declared May 5th as National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, issuing an Executive Order to prioritize the crisis of MMIR.
To get involved, consider donating to the Sovereign Bodies Institute who excels at MMIR advocacy and maintains the largest MMIR database.
We Stand With You, guest curated by Rachel Allen (Nimiipuu [Nez Perce]), takes place in the Lynda M. Frost Contemporary American Indian Art Gallery. This gallery is dedicated to exclusively exhibiting and programming work by contemporary Native artists. MAM is situated on the traditional, ancestral territories of the S茅li拧 and Ql虛isp茅 peoples. Exhibitions like this are one of the ways that the museum honors and recognizes this relationship.
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