Remembering those Affected by the MMIP Crisis and Drawing Awareness

Shawl honoring missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls, 2024
Created by Connie Black Bear-Brushbreaker-Ga Wiyan Sni Win (Woman Who Doesn’t Look Back Sicangu Lakota)
Courtesy of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

Empty chairs draped with shawls at Pokagon Four Winds Casino, Michigan, 2019
Photograph by Laura Kollar

Representative of Indigenous activism, an empty chair draped with a traditional native shawl symbolizes a missing, murdered, or victimized loved one. Similar chairs appear at hearings held by the Not Invisible Act Commission and other hearings where people testify. They recall the tradition in many Indigenous families to always preserve a space for absent loved ones.

Shawl-maker Connie Black Bear-Brushbreaker-Ga Wiyan Sni Win was inspired by Nick Alan Foote’s and Kelsey Mata Foote’s No More Stolen Sisters artwork featured in this exhibition. She is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and is currently the Director of Diabetes Prevention at the Rosebud Wellness Center.

“Missing or Murdered Native Americans Memorial Shawl,” Administration for Native Americans, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020