AUSTIN, Texas – More than 20 Indigenous Texans parked their motorcycles outside the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, revving into motion the Red Dress Exhibition.
Inside the museum’s lobby, more than 30 red dresses were suspended from the ceiling, highlighting a fatal issue.
“Each one of those dresses represents the person who would be wearing that dress if they were here today… you look at the different sizes [and] styles, and that identifies the murdered and missing Indigenous women,” Darlene Gomez said.
Gomez grew up two miles outside of the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation in New Mexico. She is now the general counsel for Medicine Wheel Ride, a collective of Indigenous women motorcyclists who boost awareness of an ongoing national crisis. That is, disproportionately high rates of violence toward Indigenous women in the United States. The riders collaborated with the Red Sand Project to launch the exhibit – complimenting their main project – a documentary film called “We Ride for Her,” which premiered at SXSW on Sunday.
Both displays exemplify a common tribulation among the community as more than four out of five Indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that less than half of violent victimizations against Indigenous women are reported to authorities, which means these disproportionately high cases are significantly underestimated.
Prairie Rose Seminole is one of the co-directors and co-producers of “We Ride for Her” and is a member of three affiliated tribes: Arikara, Northern Cheyenne and Lakota Nations in North Dakota.
Seminole said she has personal ties to the film and exhibition.
“I was a young person when my Aunt Charlene was killed … on a gravel road on the reservation in an area where law enforcement just didn’t really care about Native people,” she said.
Gomez said she has also witnessed similar tragedies firsthand.
“My journey on the murdered, missing Indigenous women trail started in 2001 when my childhood friend Melissa Motaya went missing from the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation in Dulce, New Mexico,” she said. “She is currently still missing.”
She said these high rates of violence are the result of systemic failures in the country.
“When you go missing, law enforcement will very rarely look for you,” Gomez said. “And [there’s] all the barriers to justice because you’re a Native American woman.”
Lorna Cuny, a co-founder of Medicine Wheel Ride, said a lack of governmental support makes it difficult to provide resources for this vulnerable population and pressures civil society to take action.
“It’s mostly grassroots organizations who are the ones that are doing the work. And a lot of the time we don’t have the training or expertise, but… we want to make a difference,” she said.
Still, the Red Dress organizers are continuing to fight for a more equitable future by spreading empathy and awareness.
“Remember that this exhibit is an example that you and I are the same,” Gomez said. “That these victims are very much like your mothers, your sisters, your aunties, and that we all deserve justice.”
