The REDress exhibit was started as a public art project by Métis artist, Jaime Black in Canada to raise awareness about the high rates of missing and murdered Native women and girls and the lack of appropriate responses to this crisis. Since then, the Red Dress has become an international symbol of the MMIWG2S movement and represents the the blood of our missing Native siblings. They hang empty as a representation of the lives stolen from violence.
The red hand print is also a prominent symbol of the MMIWG2S movement. It represents the systemic silencing of this crisis.
We honored Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women’s, Girls, and 2S Day by standing in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters across Turtle Island & Canada by hanging up the symbolic red dress #REDRess and imprinting the symbolic red hand print in our community. This was the first year a U.S. president recognized Native Hawaiians as part of this crisis.
The Hawai‘i State Legislature designated a task force ran by @statusofwomenhawaii and @oha_hawaii to explore this crisis as current data on Murdered & Missing Native Hawaiian Women, Girls, & Māhū are limited. Our Executive Director of @kamawaelualani @nikcristobal is the Principal Researcher investigating this issue and generating a report about the scope of the problem and recommendations.
#nomorestolensisters #nomorestolenland
🩸The third leading cause of death for Native women is murder, shocking given this population is less than 2% of the entire population.
🩸Kānaka ‘ōiwi women make up 67-77% of sex trafficking cases in Hawai‘i & Kānaka ‘ōiwi children make up 37% of child sex trafficking cases.
🩸Data on NHs is limited because of: systemic racism, homo/transphobia, and misogyny; colonization and the continual desecration of sacred land; fueling the interests of extractive industries such as the military and tourism; lack of centralized data collection; & inconsistent jurisdictional protocols between islands.
Join us in stomping out this systemically bred hatred for women and all things indigenous on days of awareness and especially on days where no one cares to even drop a tear for these murdered & missing women, girls, and māhū. 🙏🏽
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@zontaclubofkauai
@ywcaofkauai @decolonizefeminism
