#Herstorymatters

#Herstorymatters

By Nicky Kay Michael, PhD

Indigenous Nations Studies Professor

The United States could take a chapter from our northern relatives in Canada who are raising awareness of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).  The Red Dress Project is one of many awareness programs.  The Red Dress Project is a particularly haunting campaign which evokes the silence of the missing women.  Images of dresses on hangers hang loosely on fences, trees, or any appendage, just as any place a woman could disappear.  The red material, where once beautiful female body filled, moves in the breeze, silent—just like the silence of the answers to their disappearances and murders.  There is a powerful message in the silence of the empty red dresses; the emptiness of the mother, sister, or daughter who once wore that dress.  While her physical presence is gone, she lives on in our memories, hearts, and minds.  We will not forget her.  We will not let her memory fade.  We will tell her story.

On this eve year 2018, to the one-hundred year mark of women’s suffrage of 1919 in the United States many American women are facing another chapter of what much of media calls the Reckoning.  While I have yet to find a clear definition of this, my interpretation means that we, as an American society are holding powerful men accountable for their action, whether that be from twenty-five years ago, or two hours ago.  If a man groped, accosted, raped, or even “accidently” slid his hand down a woman’s back side, he can now be called out into the public for social and economic prohibitions. 

For so many of women who have suffered through the daily humiliations because they were a female, this new chapter is empowering.  Women are gaining validation from indeed knowing that the violations were wrong, but silent because socially and economically, they were forced into submission.  How many of us know what happened to that one woman who stood up and accused a man of molestation or rape in a church or local community?  These isolated women became symbols of shame and victimization—the ones exemplifying the scarlet letter in modern society.  In isolated incidents, a woman was remembered for being that victim for years to come.  Their public scrutiny was a second and third violation of the effects of sexual assault and violence.  In numbers of threes, tens, twenties of the recent months, power has come from speaking of the violations in clear, unapologetic venues. 

Yet in all this noise, most Americans, indeed, the world remains unaware of the most forgotten, most marginalized, and the least protected in our society, Indigenous women and girls.  The only sounds of Indigenous women in the public are the stereotypical and extremely inappropriate remarks from President Trump using a teen-bride, Pocahontas, during a commemorative ceremony of Navajo Code Talkers from WW II.  His choice of a victimized Indigenous teenager is a nauseating irony to the exact subject of MMIWG.

Not all women attained the vote from the 19th Amendment.  While not belittling those courageous women who sacrificed their well-being, imprisoned and force-fed to attain the American vote, the 19th Amendment applied to American women.  The people Indigenous to the North American continent were not “American” in 1919.  American Indians did not receive blanket American citizenship until 1924, a World War and five years after American women.  The Code Talkers, Special Forces, and the courageous 19,000 American Indians who fought, sacrificed and often killed in action, were the reason America finally granted citizenship to American Indians.  A second World War occurred before the United States recognized limited tribal rights.  And a full fifty years after the 19^th Amendment did all states finally conform to the law and allow all Native Americans to vote.

Why is it that in all the noise and recognition of this Reckoning are Indigenous women’s voices still silenced?  Why we should all care that there is so little recognition of MMIWG is because there is a direct correlation to the value America places on human lives.  But more so, the silence is due to the threads of extermination policies threaded through the American system for the last one-hundred and fifty years.  Those threads that continue the insidious socialization of the “only good Indian is a dead one.” 

Those women and girls who suffer through forgotten cracks in the system today, a system that in turn creates their vulnerability as poor and defenseless, stems from a long trajectory of victimization and powerlessness.  Indeed thousands of young girls and women were preyed on, raped, murdered and easily discarded, by soldiers in the stockades before the 1830s Trail of Tears.  California Indigenous women suffered some of the worst atrocities of rape and murder during the 1950s Gold Rush.  Indeed, thousands of Indigenous women were sold into and part of an extensive Spanish then Mexican slave trade and sex trafficking system from the 1700-1870s.  The list of suffering for Indigenous women through the 500 years of colonization would put the United States and each group of colonizing peoples on this continent to shame.  Today, the numbers of Indigenous girls in sex trafficking are an extension of colonization; same as the violence against our women.

What is this trajectory that has so arrested the voices of Indigenous women?  I believe if Americans knew the full breadth of numbers and depth of violations, they would be shocked, although I am not so sure that would turn into action.  The irony with this last statement is that we cannot even state the number of missing and murdered females because no entity has the leverage to study the true numbers. Working with college students every day tends to give me hope that this will change.  After being educated in the long history of violations, I hope that they remember and will continue to make room for those silent voices they would not have heard had they not taken the Native American, American Indian or Indigenous Studies courses.  But more importantly, Indigenous peoples can speak loudly and clearly by demanding resources and justice for our women.  We must ALL educate and vote for those who would support programs for women and girls.  We must empower ourselves.  The most recent elections are decided by small percentages.  We could be the deciding factor of many elections.

To conclude this piece, I wrote a poem for #NativeTwitter.  Most of these stories I know personally just as most of us know personal stories.  After all, we all have grandmothers, aunties, sisters, daughters and nieces.

#Herlifematters

To a mother stabbed over 100 times on the bathroom floor while her daughter watched trapped #herlivesmattered #To the grandmother taking care of her 12 grandkids in a searing-hot HUD house of Oklahoma #herlivesmatters To the pregnant teen Mom rescued from sex trafficking #herlivesmatter To the 7-year-old watching her Dad hit her Mom #herstorymatters To the single Mom working for two parents at home and in the work-world for her kids at home alone #herstorymatters To the 20-year-old Secretary at the tribal offices getting coffee after the Administrator has already forced himself on her #herstorymatters

To the northern girl who found her cousin murdered last night in a frozen gully #herlifemattered To the teen girl who committed suicide last night because no one cared enough to change her story #herlifemattered To the grandmothers who walked thousands of miles before passing away in unmarked graves across our mother earth #herlivesmattered To the 300-year-old grandmother who was dug up and robbed remains sold underground unable to rest in peace #herlifemattered By Nicky Kay Michael, PhD Published in February Issue, Native Hoop