“Forward,” painted by Reyna Hernandez.
Reyna Hernandez
Tucked behind the bright yellow exterior of All My Relations Art Gallery on Franklin Avenue is something extraordinary. “Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance,” an exhibition that features contemporary Indigenous artists’ expressions of resistance to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW), hangs on the gallery walls. The exhibition, which is the third installment of the Bring Her Home series, offers narratives that counter the colonial history of the MMIW epidemic, illuminating Indigenous resistance to its structural violence in a series of paintings, photos, mixed-media works, and sculptures.
“My hope for this exhibit is to highlight empowered work created by Indigenous womxn, two-spirit, trans, and gender non-conforming artists. Hearing from the people who are directly targeted with this type of structural violence is an incredibly important and necessary step in understanding how we can challenge and resist this [seemingly] never-ending attempt to erase us. There is so much to learn from people who are often silenced and I wanted to create space for these perspectives to be heard and seen,” Reyna Hernandez, who curated the exhibition, said in a press release.
“Bring Her Home” features artwork by 14 Indigenous artists, including five who are based in Minnesota: the exhibition showcases embroidery from Loriene Pearson, sculpture and video installation from Graci Horne, and mixed-medium work by Cole Redhorse Jackson using elk rawhide. All of the artwork speaks to a common theme: Julie Buffalohead’s mixed-medium piece “The Guardian” portrays a coyote sitting in a bird’s nest, a face mask stamped with MMIW’s symbolic red handprint dangling from its mouth. Dyani White Hawk’s “I Am Your Relative” is a photo series of six women and girls wearing traditional ribbon skirts and T-shirts with tribal identities printed on the back (Dakota, Anishinaabe, Catracha Hocak, etc.) and messages on the front: “I am / More than your desire / More than your fantasy / More than a mascot / Ancestral love prayer sacrifice / Your relative.”
According to a report by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Taskforce, created by the state Legislature in 2019, Indigenous women are seven times more likely than white women to be murdered in Minnesota. In any given month, around 15 percent of the female missing person cases in Minnesota are Indigenous women and girls—though they make up just one percent of the state’s population. The report also found that disproportionate violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people is rooted in colonization, historical trauma, racism, sexism, and sexual objectification—an understanding that Indigenous communities have long held intimately.
The MMIW epidemic has become a flashpoint in the ongoing controversy around the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline replacement project. According to the Sovereign Bodies Institute, an organization that researches gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people, the link between extractive industries and violence against Indigenous women and girls is well-documented. Many of the Indigenous women leading the opposition to Line 3 have cited the threat of sex trafficking and gender-based violence that often accompanies large groups of itinerant pipeline workers—an argument that highlights “Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance’s” resonance with the present moment.
All My Relations Arts Director Angela Two Stars, who has worked on the “Bring Her Home” series since its beginning, spoke to the exhibition’s power as a site of resistance. “I am so pleased to have passed the torch to Reyna Hernandez to curate this third installment of Bring Her Home,” she said in a press release. “The theme of Bring Her Home has progressed from awareness, to advocacy, and now with Reyna at the helm of curation, to resistance. The powerful expressions of the artists she has gathered to address this ongoing epidemic; continues to give voice to our sacred Indigenous women.”
“Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance” will be exhibited through February of 2021. It’s available for viewing virtually via the All My Relations Art Gallery website, and for limited in-person viewing by appointment. On February 18, 19, and 20, from 6 to 8:30 p.m., Madweyaashkaa: Waves Can Be Heard, an animated video collage by Moira Villiard, will be projected onto the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam wall at Owamniyomni as part of the exhibition.
All My Relations Arts is an initiative of the Native American Community Development Institute, that partnered with the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center and Minnesota Indian Sexual Assault Coalition to organize “Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance.”
