By congressional resolution, May 5th is a national day of awareness for missing and murdered native women and girls. Hundreds of tribal, federal and state organizations recognize that resolution. SDPB's May spotlight shines on the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people, and we'll spend this month exploring the statistics and the stories, the traumas, and the efforts to apply modern solutions to a decades old inequity. Lily Mendoza is with the Red Ribbon Skirt Society in Rapid City. She joins us to help us understand the full extent of the crisis.
Lori Walsh:
Now, you and I have been talking for years now about this crisis and where it begins and hopefully what it takes to make it end. But for people who are unfamiliar with what we're talking about, how do you put into context why there are so many indigenous women and girls and two-spirited people who disappear or who are victims of crimes that are never really resolved by any regular expectation of justice?
Lily Mendoza:
Sure. This crisis has been happening since the colonization here in America, which means from non-natives coming onto our land from all four directions across the earth. That began, many hundreds of years ago that was taking place. So it has just evolved, as far as our communities and our people really taking note of that and paying attention to that, within the last 15 to 20 years and saying, "Our indigenous women, they're being murdered and they're missing." So we started to take stock of that throughout Canada, throughout the United States and even overseas. What we've done is, like I said, taken stock in that and began to do awareness and education around the issue, but it really did begin hundreds of years ago for our women.
Lori Walsh:
And as we talked earlier on South Dakota Public Broadcasting about women's suffrage, one of the things we spoke deeply about was before that colonization, before that contact with Europeans, that the women in many of these tribes held seats of great influence, of political influence. So talk a little bit just about the vast difference between a woman or a two-spirited person's role in a tribal community versus the just complete ignoring of dignity and humanity that we see in many of these crimes today.
Lily Mendoza:
Sure. In many of our tribes across the world, across Turtle Island, we lived in matriarchal societies. So what that means is that our indigenous women were really the backbone in their communities, in their [inaudible], so they were really highly involved in decision making. And for the most part, especially with our Lakota people, which I can probably speak more to is our women were really making the decisions in silence, and the husbands, the chiefs, the leaders within those encampments, they would have their discussions, and then they would go back to their wives and have those discussions with them and making those decisions within the home. And then they would all come back together. And for the most part, they would be in consensus with what their wives had discussed with them.
So, really our women were the ones in society that were making the decisions. And we kind of lost that. We lost that over the years. We're coming back to that now. We've got a voice in our communities. And what we've seen and what I see is that we are losing our matriarchs to this crisis. Many of our young women will never have an opportunity to become a matriarch within their families. So it's very important for us as a society to make sure, first of all, that we're educating out there, that we're providing awareness and making sure that our future matriarchs are safe.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. It seems to me, and I'm curious for your input, that in just the past year, there have been some significant advancements from not only what we're hearing from the state lawmakers to at the federal level saying enough is enough, and let's try to figure out what exactly we can do to move this conversation forward with a taskforce like Operation Lady Justice, or a partnership with the Attorney General's office in South Dakota for a liaison to deal with some of these missing people cases. What have you noticed that gives you a sense that the voices are being heard, even though there is so much work to be done?
Lily Mendoza:
Sure. I think just what you shared, is that with the Operation Lady Justice at a federal level, for them to begin to form that taskforce on missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska natives. Now, it's not very specific to women, so that's something I would hope that we would really take a look at that specifically. As a society, we can't do everything. So our focus is really on missing and murdered indigenous women, children, and two-spirits. So that's been in place since 2019. Their function is to be able to consult with tribal governments and see how they can work together across state lines to deal with the issue.
So, one of the things that I know that was missed in this whole executive order is reaching out into the grassroots organizations. So that's a major component to that. We were on a listening session a couple months ago, and that was brought forth to the taskforce. There was not only myself, but other people that were online, other women saying, "Now you need to hear from us. You kind of forgot about us." So that's next steps. In fact, in May of this month, we will be getting online during some of those next steps listening sessions, to see how we can be involved in this whole project, this whole program, which is in place from the federal government.
Now, as far as the states, great. I think it's wonderful that they're going to be having an office there, but what does that mean? Who is that person that's going to be in that position that's going to make a difference, to do that work, to connect with all of the organizations out here with the women's society? So that's another thing that we need to really take a look at as well. But I think it's great that it happened. Some of the other things that we're doing locally, and we're really modeling this for other states, is working very, very close with law enforcement here in Pennington County, working very, very close with them. We have a close relationship with Tim Doyle, who is a community engagement Lieutenant. So we're able to report incidents that are happening directly to him.
If we hear of something happening, people can contact us. We direct it over there, so they can begin the process of finding the young women, what's going on. We even get calls that maybe somebody has been found murdered. So we actually follow up on that and see where the police department is with those cases. We know that there's confidentiality involved. So we're very, very careful with that, but this is something that is new and it's happening. And I'm proud to say that the Red Ribbon Skirt Society has taken the lead in doing that, so that becomes a model for other states across the country.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me a little bit as well about, and very briefly, I want to let people know about the work that the Red Ribbon Skirt Society does, because everything that you just said and a whole lot we probably don't have time to cover, but also this idea of walking alongside people who have lost somebody. There is this element of trauma that never goes away. Tell us a little bit about some of that work that the Red Ribbon Skirt Society is engaged in.
Lily Mendoza:
Well, we created the Center for Healing, Prayer, and Remembrance. That's located actually upstairs in my place of business, which is the Birdcage Bookstore. So what it is, is it's a sacred place where people from families and relatives can come and they have the opportunity to grieve and to pray and to remember and honor the spirits of those loved lost ones, especially for those that are still missing, especially maybe for those that have been found murdered and families have not had an opportunity to grieve their death. That's what this room is created for. We have people come from all over that know about this space and they come here and they can spend time in this room. The room is surrounded by red dresses, and on the red dresses then are the names of those women that are still missing and/or have been murdered.
So they're able to come here and they're able to grieve in their own way. We have sage in here all the time. We have a feeder, we have tobacco. And many of them bring those items with them when they come and they leave them. So it gives them an opportunity and a space to have those loved ones be remembered. One of the big cases that really tugs at my heart on a regular basis is [Regenda Rubidoux 00:11:11], who was murdered down on Rosebud. She was 11 years old, and that was 28 years ago. And actually we dedicated our office, which is our MMIW office, which we opened last month, it was dedicated in her memory.
She left home to go to an overnight birthday party, never came home. They began to look for her. It was reported to the police. They didn't look right away. So it really took the community down there to go and start searching for her. And they did, and they found her and she was murdered and she was also raped. So the mother continually, as we know, we know how grief lasts and it never goes away. She's a big part of this movement here, and we have Regenda's picture on our altar. We have a dress with her name on it. And so, yes, our office has been dedicated in the memory of Regenda Rubidoux, who was murdered at the age of 11. But those are the kinds of stories and those are the kinds of families that we try and help through the process of grieving here with Red Ribbon Skirt Society.
Lori Walsh:
Now on Wednesday, May 5th, there is an art installation at the Journey Museum. Tell us a little bit about that before we say goodbye for now.
Lily Mendoza:
Sure, sure. The project is a public art project dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous women. It's nationwide. And what we've done is had individuals or organizations, societies create shadow boxes. And the theme around the shadow box, of course, is MMIW. So what we're going to be doing on Wednesday down at the Journey Museum, we're going to be attaching those shadow boxes to wooden chairs, which are going to be sitting inside of teepee poles that we're putting up today. And in the middle is going to be an altar. So that's going to be up from May 5th through June 2nd. The name of the exhibit is the Earth is Weeping.
We named it this because sitting here ... Right now I'm sitting in the healing room. And as we were thinking about what are we going to call this exhibit, it just came to us in a natural way that the earth is weeping. We've got our earth, our people that are walking on mother earth, they walk and they weep for these missing and murdered indigenous women, children and two-spirits. There are still some of our women that we know that are under the ground. So the earth is weeping and the earth is taking care of those women until they can come home to their families, so they can be found, so that they can bury them in a good way.
So that's why we came up with the name the Earth is Weeping. And it was really quite emotional when we talked about that, but it's real and it's true. So that's what's going to happen down at the Journey. We're starting to work on it today. And five o'clock tomorrow, we'll have the opening of the exhibit. We've invited some of the families to attend, so they can be there with us in prayer. We've invited several of our partners. And that's one of the bigger things that I miss talking about is that we're really building great partnership, not only here in Rapid City, but across the United States, so that we're all working together and uniting for the cause.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Lily Mendoza is with the Red Ribbon Skirt Society in Rapid City. You can visit that Center for Healing, Prayer, and Remembrance at Birdcage Books and Mercantile in Rapid City. And the installation opens tomorrow at the Journey Museum. This is just day one of our month long SDPB spotlight on this topic. So Lily, thank you so much for being here with us. We appreciate your time.
Lily Mendoza:
Thank you.