Floor design: Jaycee Beyale, “Untitled” (2021), sand painting (courtesy Danielle SeeWalker)ĭenver-based mixed-media artist, writer, and activist Danielle SeeWalker, Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta and citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota (whose work is on display in The Red Road Project through December 18 at the McNichols Civic Center Building in downtown Denver), told Hyperallergic in an email, “Native American/Alaskan Native communities have some of the highest rates of assault, kidnapping, and murder of women and much of this can be tied to stolen land, broken treaties, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and the countless government policies centered around assimilation and cultural genocide.” Ribbon skirts suspended in the McMahon Gallery, Dairy Arts Center, 2021. This summer, Indigenous artists and activists united to pass MMIR SB22-150, sponsored by Senator Jessie Danielson, Representatives Leslie Herod, Monica Duran, and Joe Salazar, which aimed to specifically address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Colorado. According to Native Women’s Wilderness, Indigenous women are murdered at 10 times the rate of other ethnicities, making it the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women (according to the Centers for Disease Control). Other abbreviations, which are often used interchangeably are: MMIW (Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women), MMIWG (Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls), MMIWG2S (Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2-Spirit People). The Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) epidemic dates further back than its media portrayals.

Austin sculpture native indian woman