SummaryThis podcast provides an analysis and reflection on the Seattle Times Docuseries, NOT INVISIBLE, from the perspective of two student learners who value Native knowledge. This docuseries is centered on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. Across five episodes, these films shine a light on various forms of systemic oppression including violence against women, the invisibility of Indigenous communities, and police neglect and distrust.
This podcast episode aims to illuminate the voices of the passionate, wise, and courageous women who are dedicated to addressing and ending violence against Indigenous women. Viewers and listeners will hear about the powerful and impactful methods of storytelling through two of the episodes titled “Say her name” and “Justice for Rosenda.” In the “Say her name” episode, the intersectionality of climate injustices, violence against women, and racial oppression come to light through Roxanne White’s story of surviving sex trafficking. #SAYHERNAME and #MMIW highlight social justice movements of two groups of oppressed women in America. As learners, we acknowledge that the voices of the marginalized in both movements call for a need for justice to be served. “Justice for Rosenda” is a devastating depiction of how addiction is used as a means of dismissal and literal disposal. Multiple levels of activism are highlighted, including how movements such as MMIW have the power to impact structural change. “She deserves justice” is a call to action. So, in closing we ask: As learners of MMIW, what will you do? Resources for potential acts of solidarity are offered at the conclusion of the podcast. Content warning: Death, sex trafficking, stigma, violence - Kay Farr & Stephanie Cuellar |
Episode |
Transcript
KAY: All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining in on our podcast today. Before we get started, let me first by [?] introducing myself. My name is Kay Farr. I’m a second-year grad student in the Higher Ed Leadership program. And today, myself and my partner, Stephanie, will be talking about a docuseries by Seattle Times, titled Not Invisible, talking about the confronting of the crisis of violence against our Native women. Before we get started, just bringing a little context about our learning, we are definitely approaching this conversation today from a very learner perspective; we’re not experiencing [?] this study, myself personally have been tapped into this. I’m learning more about Native people, being from the city of Milwaukee, which is one of [?] Native communities in Wisconsin. And my first involvement with getting to know more about Native Americans and Native people in America was through the Milwaukee Public Museum, and an exhibit that kind of highlighted some of the interest in knowing more about them in Wisconsin. So, before we start, I’m gonna let Stephanie introduce herself, and then we’ll go from there.
STEPHANIE: Thanks, Kay. Yes, my name is Stephanie Cuellar. I am a student here at Texas Christian University, and I want to echo some of the things Kay said, specifically that we are not the experts, and we are coming humbly today as individuals who value Native knowledge and understand the necessity for that and for Native individuals to really be at the center of these initiatives. So, we are strictly here to learn. And, prior to this project, I had a very limited knowledge of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), and my knowledge was strictly limited to NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. At my former institution in Fort Worth, Texas, we used to have, like, a lab for NamUs, and that’s really all that I knew about this epidemic. And I come today as a Mexican American woman just wanting to learn from Native peoples. And we thought it was appropriate today to read our land acknowledgement before we got started. So, this was a statement that was made in collaboration with the Wichita and affiliated tribes and TCU. And it’s strictly to raise awareness. There’s also a monument on campus to raise awareness as well. So, I’ll read that quickly: “TCU acknowledges the many benefits, responsibilities, and relationships of being in this place, which we share with all living beings. We respectfully acknowledge all Native American peoples who have lived on this land since time immemorial. TCU especially acknowledges and pays respects to the Wichita and affiliated tribes upon whose historical homeland our university is located.” And then, before we get started, really getting into the nitty gritty of the resources that we chose for this podcast, we wanted to kinda tell you why we chose these resources. So, specifically, these are videos, as Kay mentioned, it’s a docuseries, there’s a total of five, we’ll be talking about two of the five today. And really, we both agreed that video and pairing it with audio…it’s just a really powerful way of sharing stories, and it offers, like, a fluid way of doing that. And as you’ll hear from us, these are really gut-wrenching, gut-wrenching stories. So there, you see pain on people’s faces. You see anger, desperation, motivation, inspiration. You get to see the posters, the chants that activists are chanting for in demanding justice. And really special, and particularly special, that I found was through this video, you’re seeing like a very generational effort to tackle a very systemic issue. So, you see young children at these walks, or painting posters, and you see adults and older adults, and so you just get this generational effect through this docuseries. So, I really appreciated that. And then, as I mentioned, it's really grounded and the purpose is to shine a light on systemic issues. And so, these videos really hit on a plethora of issues as well as hit on the intersectionality of those issues. So, just a couple: like violence against women, the invisibility of Indigenous and Native communities, police negligence and distrust and violence, and as well as addiction and how addiction is used as a method of disposal or dismissal. And Kay, I know you had things to add as well.
KAY: Yes. Thank you, Stephanie. So, the two things that I would add is that we’ll hear a lot more about all of these bullet points within our conversation today, but in particular, the episode that highlights the shine on the social justice efforts. And we will talk a lot more about that, but it’s something just to be mindful of as we think about: what does justice mean? What does social justice mean? Or, how do we think through this lens of being proactive as allies, as advocates, learning about missing and murdered Indigenous women and the community that is a part of that environment. And so, with that, understanding that it also will highlight some of the things that we learned about devaluing and dehumanizing women of color, both being a woman of color, learning about this topic, as Stephanie being Mexican American, myself being African American. Understand that in those positions of oppression that will come up as well as we kind of navigate the stories that are being told within this series. And in this image here, we learned in class the significance of the color red in the MMIW movement, as well as wanting to acknowledge some of the words that we pulled out as standpoint words, would that be [?] sovereign, target, law, sexualty, gender, tribal, forgotten, survivor-led. It’s highlighting some of those things, and we will talk a lot more about what to go through and learn about the episodes together. So, without further ado. Our first episode we walk to talk about is episode number two, which is titled “Say her name.” It’s helpful to know that the QR codes, going to click on those QR codes, will take you to the website if you would like to watch the video. But to talk a little more about the title, “Say her name,” in the episode that we learned. And so, it’s first important to acknowledge, as I mentioned in the point above about social justice movements, it was a very interesting correlation and see how #SayHerName became the title of this episode. And so, it’s important to also recognize that #SayHerName, the origin of that came about through the killing that took place of Sandra Bland. And that hashtag of Say Her Name was really emphasized by the Black Americans in America, highlighting the significance of Black women dying at the hands of policemen, as well as anti-Black issues that were occurring within America. And so, having that origin and understanding that there's one oppressed group who has taken that hashtag and utilized it to really amplify the stories of the silenced or untold or the women who haven’t [?], and then we have the hashtag MMIW origin, which originated in Canada, from the First Nation sisters. And what we have with the MMIW hashtag is a conversation really highlighting the significance of the invisibility and missing and murdered Indigenous women and their stories being told. So what we have here with these two hashtags; we’re looking at a comparison in a relational context of oppressed women in society being killed or missing. And we take nothing away from the MMIW origin, but we want to highlight it, make sure we recognize that #SayHerName originated from African American pool of movement and this support and solidarity has come together with MMIW work. And so, one of the quotes that came from this episode that I thought was so important to mention was “gone but never forgotten.” We hear that all the time. When I say “say her name, say her name, say her name,” you fill in the blank; you say their name amplifies that because we really want people to not forget those who have lost their lives. The women that we learned about in this history, we learn about them losing their lives or going missing and not being talked about. And so, the advocates, the allies, who are constantly in these episodes, pushing and amplifying that are highlighting this sense of “gone but never forgotten” as a way to push through that. So, when we consider Roxanne White, who was one of the advocates in all of the videos that we did watch, was a total of three, and Roxanne White is a human trafficking survivor. She was human trafficked for twenty years and also a survivor of domestic violence. And so, before I proceed, I’ll let Stephanie talk a little more about man camps, and one of the things I wanted to highlight that we learned through this episode was that one of the very places that she was trafficked in was called the Yakama Nation Reservation that was twenty-two years ago. And there was really emphasis on her story being universal and how it was not just her but other Indigenous women who experienced that as well. And she was able to come out of that, she survived that, right? And it was in a man camp known as Yakama Nation Reservation where she was exploited and taken advantage of and used in that way, which is highlighted in other ways within the video. So, I’ll let Stephanie talk a little more about man camps and the highlights she has there, and then we’ll go.
STEPHANIE: Thank you, Kay. Yes, so man camps admittedly…and again, reiterating that I am a learner and not an expert on this topic, man camps, I was first introduced to that through an article that we read as a requirement of this course. And I didn’t fully know what man camps were and the article is really informative and we have actually linked the article at the end of this podcast, in case you want to read it. But it was a Greenpeace article written by Kaitlin Grabble [Garble] this year. And Kaitlin does a good job explaining that man camps, particularly Big Oil, or Roxanne mentions farmers and ships that come in and bring a lot of male workers into areas for temporary amounts of time for work. And while these men are there, they are trafficking women or abusing women or, in some cases, murdering. And so, I thought that was a really powerful headline that big oil is fueling the crisis. And it goes to show the intersectionality between racial injustice and gender injustice and environmental injustice and how a lot of those are connected and intertwined. And you can’t really address one without recognizing issues in another.
KAY: Yes, and so before we go into our next episode, I want us to definitely highlight in the picture on the right: what we see is a screenshot pulled from the video of Roxanne standing on the outskirts on that same very land that she was first trafficked in. And I feel like that speaks to the power of her survival, of sharing her story, within the storyline that we got a chance to learn about, it’s impactful and it’s meaningful to have that moment and experience that with her as a viewer. And so, I wanted to make sure we highlighted that because that storyline is definitely one that continues to stand out, being that she was one who was able to say she survived it in relation to those who may have not. And so, with that in mind, we also want to recognize that in the other image, what we see here is a moment where you see her face and her expression, and Roxanne is really having a moment with her family during a time and they were playing tribal music. And we take nothing away from that, but understand that music is universal and then that way, you have an opportunity to feel that pain, that joy, that love, that energy that is present with them I saw as a viewer. So that’s something to highlight. On to our next episode. I’m gonna let Stephanie pick it up from here.
STEPHANIE: Excellent. The third episode is titled “Justice for Rosenda” and Rosenda was a citizen of the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and a descendent of Yakama Nation. And Rosenda was also a mother of four; she was described as outgoing and funny. I mention these things ‘cause I want to frame some of the comments that were made by her family members. So, one of which was…well, first, I want to address how addiction was used in her case as a method of dismissal. So, Rosenda did drugs and because of that, police…you can see from the video, it took three hundred days to find Rosenda’s body, and her body was dumped near, like, a trash dump site very close to her home. And so why it took three hundred days to find her body very close to her home is a sign of delayed justice or just lack of interest or motivation to find her. And in the video, it’s highlighted that the community knew what had happened to Rosenda before law enforcement did. So, I think that was a really powerful discrepancy to address. Also, I really love, speaking to Kay’s previous point, how Rosenda’s daughter makes a statement, and a very true one. She says “all lives matter.” And I was really taken aback by that because the way we’ve seen “all lives matter,” that phrase be used, has really been in an effort to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement. But the way Rosenda’s daughter is saying it is absolutely true. And she’s saying, even though my mom was an addict, her life still mattered. So I just found that to be extremely powerful and kind of reclaiming that phrase in an appropriate way and not in a way that co-opts or tries to take away from a movement that’s addressing racial injustice. And then finally, I wanna mention in this video, it comes through really clearly that fear is a part of these women’s lives. And I want to preface with understanding that that’s not always the case. Annita Lucchesi came to speak at TCU, and she mentioned that sometimes fear is what police want, and they put out stats or they, you know, neglect certain things so that they’re needed, the police department is needed. And so I want to make sure that I recognize that, but what really came through in this video in particular was that because of the lack of justice, because these women are targeted, mainly because there’s no repercussions, there’s no investigation oftentimes, and no justice. People think, “oh, well, I can target this group of women and there won’t be any consequences.” And so, because of that, through this video, these women speak about fear, fear to even go to the grocery store. And so that was really impactful, devastating. But again, it all leads back to that delayed justice. And we’re not going through episode one, but episode one really illustrates the dynamics between the police department and how legislation has been tackled by these Native and Indigenous women. House Bill, it was a House Bill in Washington, 2159, said that it was a bill that ordered investigating of Native Americans, missing and murdered Native Americans, Native American women in particular. And so you see how these women really got together and created activism that was structural, that was attacking structures and trying to dismantle or disrupt structures that have been in place that lead to their abduction and murders. So I found that to be super impactful throughout this video as well, and if you want to hear a little more about that House Bill, that’s in episode one.
KAY: Awesome. Thank you, Stephanie. And before we close today and wrap up, I just wanted to highlight Stephanie gave [?] a lot of very good insight into what we learned about episode three, just highlighting some of the visual images that we see because I find them to be very important. So some of the quotes that we pulled from this episode particularly was one that said “we will get justice for you.” Right, we will get justice for you,” “the pain, the loss, the worry - it’s all real,” “she deserves justice.” And we emphasize this understanding of justice, there’s justice that is needed to be had and what we learn in the episode in the end is there was still a fight for justice happening for Rosenda and many other missing and murdered Indigenous women who are not…have yet been found or yet received the proper justice that is due to them. And so what we see in these images is we see a red dress hanging with…off the tree, which highlights from a visual of one of the women mentioned in the story, Alyssa, who had went missing and been missing, still had not been found. And that was over ten years ago as of today. And then we also see the protests where there was a continuation of “Say her name” or “Justice for Rosenda” or other women who have went through the same story or her families who are going through the same pain and loss and worry just looking for the loved ones wanting that closure and the other gathering is a unified community coming together and really highlighting the significance. And that’s what we wanted to get as a takeaway. And what we learned from this is that justice cannot just be done by only one. But it has to be done with the community of all who are seeking actively to get that, and that is what the advocates and their allies and in the stories taught us more about how to do more of that. And so in closing, we do have additional resources. Stephanie, if you want to highlight anything off of this, feel free to do so and then we can wrap up and close from there.
STEPHANIE: Sure. So, very briefly, as I mentioned Annita Lucchesi, she’s the executive founding director of Sovereign Bodies Institute, and so we’ve linked that website. And particularly I wanted to highlight the toolkit that’s on that website that is a resource for individuals who want to contribute to solutions, and I’ve also linked a website called “Why I’m Giving Up On ‘Allies’” by Ernest Owens, which will kind of, if you choose to want to contribute to solutions, this will kinda warn you of pitfalls, like performative activism. It’ll remind you that this kind of work is a moral obligation. It’s not a transactional behavior, it’s not something for you to go post on your social media. It’s not about saviorism. And really what it is is about letting, in this particular case, letting Native women be at the center of this movement and not trying to come in and be at the forefront of it. And then finally, the third resource is just that Grabble [Grable] Greenpeace article that was referenced earlier, so that you can go check it out, the Big Oil article that was mentioned. And so with that, we just want to again acknowledge that we’re learners and pay our respect to the Indigenous and Native women that we’ve learned from through these resources, and we hope that you’ve learned something as well.
KAY: Awesome. I reiterate twofold what Stephanie has mentioned. Thank you for joining our podcast.
STEPHANIE: Thanks, Kay. Yes, my name is Stephanie Cuellar. I am a student here at Texas Christian University, and I want to echo some of the things Kay said, specifically that we are not the experts, and we are coming humbly today as individuals who value Native knowledge and understand the necessity for that and for Native individuals to really be at the center of these initiatives. So, we are strictly here to learn. And, prior to this project, I had a very limited knowledge of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), and my knowledge was strictly limited to NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. At my former institution in Fort Worth, Texas, we used to have, like, a lab for NamUs, and that’s really all that I knew about this epidemic. And I come today as a Mexican American woman just wanting to learn from Native peoples. And we thought it was appropriate today to read our land acknowledgement before we got started. So, this was a statement that was made in collaboration with the Wichita and affiliated tribes and TCU. And it’s strictly to raise awareness. There’s also a monument on campus to raise awareness as well. So, I’ll read that quickly: “TCU acknowledges the many benefits, responsibilities, and relationships of being in this place, which we share with all living beings. We respectfully acknowledge all Native American peoples who have lived on this land since time immemorial. TCU especially acknowledges and pays respects to the Wichita and affiliated tribes upon whose historical homeland our university is located.” And then, before we get started, really getting into the nitty gritty of the resources that we chose for this podcast, we wanted to kinda tell you why we chose these resources. So, specifically, these are videos, as Kay mentioned, it’s a docuseries, there’s a total of five, we’ll be talking about two of the five today. And really, we both agreed that video and pairing it with audio…it’s just a really powerful way of sharing stories, and it offers, like, a fluid way of doing that. And as you’ll hear from us, these are really gut-wrenching, gut-wrenching stories. So there, you see pain on people’s faces. You see anger, desperation, motivation, inspiration. You get to see the posters, the chants that activists are chanting for in demanding justice. And really special, and particularly special, that I found was through this video, you’re seeing like a very generational effort to tackle a very systemic issue. So, you see young children at these walks, or painting posters, and you see adults and older adults, and so you just get this generational effect through this docuseries. So, I really appreciated that. And then, as I mentioned, it's really grounded and the purpose is to shine a light on systemic issues. And so, these videos really hit on a plethora of issues as well as hit on the intersectionality of those issues. So, just a couple: like violence against women, the invisibility of Indigenous and Native communities, police negligence and distrust and violence, and as well as addiction and how addiction is used as a method of disposal or dismissal. And Kay, I know you had things to add as well.
KAY: Yes. Thank you, Stephanie. So, the two things that I would add is that we’ll hear a lot more about all of these bullet points within our conversation today, but in particular, the episode that highlights the shine on the social justice efforts. And we will talk a lot more about that, but it’s something just to be mindful of as we think about: what does justice mean? What does social justice mean? Or, how do we think through this lens of being proactive as allies, as advocates, learning about missing and murdered Indigenous women and the community that is a part of that environment. And so, with that, understanding that it also will highlight some of the things that we learned about devaluing and dehumanizing women of color, both being a woman of color, learning about this topic, as Stephanie being Mexican American, myself being African American. Understand that in those positions of oppression that will come up as well as we kind of navigate the stories that are being told within this series. And in this image here, we learned in class the significance of the color red in the MMIW movement, as well as wanting to acknowledge some of the words that we pulled out as standpoint words, would that be [?] sovereign, target, law, sexualty, gender, tribal, forgotten, survivor-led. It’s highlighting some of those things, and we will talk a lot more about what to go through and learn about the episodes together. So, without further ado. Our first episode we walk to talk about is episode number two, which is titled “Say her name.” It’s helpful to know that the QR codes, going to click on those QR codes, will take you to the website if you would like to watch the video. But to talk a little more about the title, “Say her name,” in the episode that we learned. And so, it’s first important to acknowledge, as I mentioned in the point above about social justice movements, it was a very interesting correlation and see how #SayHerName became the title of this episode. And so, it’s important to also recognize that #SayHerName, the origin of that came about through the killing that took place of Sandra Bland. And that hashtag of Say Her Name was really emphasized by the Black Americans in America, highlighting the significance of Black women dying at the hands of policemen, as well as anti-Black issues that were occurring within America. And so, having that origin and understanding that there's one oppressed group who has taken that hashtag and utilized it to really amplify the stories of the silenced or untold or the women who haven’t [?], and then we have the hashtag MMIW origin, which originated in Canada, from the First Nation sisters. And what we have with the MMIW hashtag is a conversation really highlighting the significance of the invisibility and missing and murdered Indigenous women and their stories being told. So what we have here with these two hashtags; we’re looking at a comparison in a relational context of oppressed women in society being killed or missing. And we take nothing away from the MMIW origin, but we want to highlight it, make sure we recognize that #SayHerName originated from African American pool of movement and this support and solidarity has come together with MMIW work. And so, one of the quotes that came from this episode that I thought was so important to mention was “gone but never forgotten.” We hear that all the time. When I say “say her name, say her name, say her name,” you fill in the blank; you say their name amplifies that because we really want people to not forget those who have lost their lives. The women that we learned about in this history, we learn about them losing their lives or going missing and not being talked about. And so, the advocates, the allies, who are constantly in these episodes, pushing and amplifying that are highlighting this sense of “gone but never forgotten” as a way to push through that. So, when we consider Roxanne White, who was one of the advocates in all of the videos that we did watch, was a total of three, and Roxanne White is a human trafficking survivor. She was human trafficked for twenty years and also a survivor of domestic violence. And so, before I proceed, I’ll let Stephanie talk a little more about man camps, and one of the things I wanted to highlight that we learned through this episode was that one of the very places that she was trafficked in was called the Yakama Nation Reservation that was twenty-two years ago. And there was really emphasis on her story being universal and how it was not just her but other Indigenous women who experienced that as well. And she was able to come out of that, she survived that, right? And it was in a man camp known as Yakama Nation Reservation where she was exploited and taken advantage of and used in that way, which is highlighted in other ways within the video. So, I’ll let Stephanie talk a little more about man camps and the highlights she has there, and then we’ll go.
STEPHANIE: Thank you, Kay. Yes, so man camps admittedly…and again, reiterating that I am a learner and not an expert on this topic, man camps, I was first introduced to that through an article that we read as a requirement of this course. And I didn’t fully know what man camps were and the article is really informative and we have actually linked the article at the end of this podcast, in case you want to read it. But it was a Greenpeace article written by Kaitlin Grabble [Garble] this year. And Kaitlin does a good job explaining that man camps, particularly Big Oil, or Roxanne mentions farmers and ships that come in and bring a lot of male workers into areas for temporary amounts of time for work. And while these men are there, they are trafficking women or abusing women or, in some cases, murdering. And so, I thought that was a really powerful headline that big oil is fueling the crisis. And it goes to show the intersectionality between racial injustice and gender injustice and environmental injustice and how a lot of those are connected and intertwined. And you can’t really address one without recognizing issues in another.
KAY: Yes, and so before we go into our next episode, I want us to definitely highlight in the picture on the right: what we see is a screenshot pulled from the video of Roxanne standing on the outskirts on that same very land that she was first trafficked in. And I feel like that speaks to the power of her survival, of sharing her story, within the storyline that we got a chance to learn about, it’s impactful and it’s meaningful to have that moment and experience that with her as a viewer. And so, I wanted to make sure we highlighted that because that storyline is definitely one that continues to stand out, being that she was one who was able to say she survived it in relation to those who may have not. And so, with that in mind, we also want to recognize that in the other image, what we see here is a moment where you see her face and her expression, and Roxanne is really having a moment with her family during a time and they were playing tribal music. And we take nothing away from that, but understand that music is universal and then that way, you have an opportunity to feel that pain, that joy, that love, that energy that is present with them I saw as a viewer. So that’s something to highlight. On to our next episode. I’m gonna let Stephanie pick it up from here.
STEPHANIE: Excellent. The third episode is titled “Justice for Rosenda” and Rosenda was a citizen of the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and a descendent of Yakama Nation. And Rosenda was also a mother of four; she was described as outgoing and funny. I mention these things ‘cause I want to frame some of the comments that were made by her family members. So, one of which was…well, first, I want to address how addiction was used in her case as a method of dismissal. So, Rosenda did drugs and because of that, police…you can see from the video, it took three hundred days to find Rosenda’s body, and her body was dumped near, like, a trash dump site very close to her home. And so why it took three hundred days to find her body very close to her home is a sign of delayed justice or just lack of interest or motivation to find her. And in the video, it’s highlighted that the community knew what had happened to Rosenda before law enforcement did. So, I think that was a really powerful discrepancy to address. Also, I really love, speaking to Kay’s previous point, how Rosenda’s daughter makes a statement, and a very true one. She says “all lives matter.” And I was really taken aback by that because the way we’ve seen “all lives matter,” that phrase be used, has really been in an effort to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement. But the way Rosenda’s daughter is saying it is absolutely true. And she’s saying, even though my mom was an addict, her life still mattered. So I just found that to be extremely powerful and kind of reclaiming that phrase in an appropriate way and not in a way that co-opts or tries to take away from a movement that’s addressing racial injustice. And then finally, I wanna mention in this video, it comes through really clearly that fear is a part of these women’s lives. And I want to preface with understanding that that’s not always the case. Annita Lucchesi came to speak at TCU, and she mentioned that sometimes fear is what police want, and they put out stats or they, you know, neglect certain things so that they’re needed, the police department is needed. And so I want to make sure that I recognize that, but what really came through in this video in particular was that because of the lack of justice, because these women are targeted, mainly because there’s no repercussions, there’s no investigation oftentimes, and no justice. People think, “oh, well, I can target this group of women and there won’t be any consequences.” And so, because of that, through this video, these women speak about fear, fear to even go to the grocery store. And so that was really impactful, devastating. But again, it all leads back to that delayed justice. And we’re not going through episode one, but episode one really illustrates the dynamics between the police department and how legislation has been tackled by these Native and Indigenous women. House Bill, it was a House Bill in Washington, 2159, said that it was a bill that ordered investigating of Native Americans, missing and murdered Native Americans, Native American women in particular. And so you see how these women really got together and created activism that was structural, that was attacking structures and trying to dismantle or disrupt structures that have been in place that lead to their abduction and murders. So I found that to be super impactful throughout this video as well, and if you want to hear a little more about that House Bill, that’s in episode one.
KAY: Awesome. Thank you, Stephanie. And before we close today and wrap up, I just wanted to highlight Stephanie gave [?] a lot of very good insight into what we learned about episode three, just highlighting some of the visual images that we see because I find them to be very important. So some of the quotes that we pulled from this episode particularly was one that said “we will get justice for you.” Right, we will get justice for you,” “the pain, the loss, the worry - it’s all real,” “she deserves justice.” And we emphasize this understanding of justice, there’s justice that is needed to be had and what we learn in the episode in the end is there was still a fight for justice happening for Rosenda and many other missing and murdered Indigenous women who are not…have yet been found or yet received the proper justice that is due to them. And so what we see in these images is we see a red dress hanging with…off the tree, which highlights from a visual of one of the women mentioned in the story, Alyssa, who had went missing and been missing, still had not been found. And that was over ten years ago as of today. And then we also see the protests where there was a continuation of “Say her name” or “Justice for Rosenda” or other women who have went through the same story or her families who are going through the same pain and loss and worry just looking for the loved ones wanting that closure and the other gathering is a unified community coming together and really highlighting the significance. And that’s what we wanted to get as a takeaway. And what we learned from this is that justice cannot just be done by only one. But it has to be done with the community of all who are seeking actively to get that, and that is what the advocates and their allies and in the stories taught us more about how to do more of that. And so in closing, we do have additional resources. Stephanie, if you want to highlight anything off of this, feel free to do so and then we can wrap up and close from there.
STEPHANIE: Sure. So, very briefly, as I mentioned Annita Lucchesi, she’s the executive founding director of Sovereign Bodies Institute, and so we’ve linked that website. And particularly I wanted to highlight the toolkit that’s on that website that is a resource for individuals who want to contribute to solutions, and I’ve also linked a website called “Why I’m Giving Up On ‘Allies’” by Ernest Owens, which will kind of, if you choose to want to contribute to solutions, this will kinda warn you of pitfalls, like performative activism. It’ll remind you that this kind of work is a moral obligation. It’s not a transactional behavior, it’s not something for you to go post on your social media. It’s not about saviorism. And really what it is is about letting, in this particular case, letting Native women be at the center of this movement and not trying to come in and be at the forefront of it. And then finally, the third resource is just that Grabble [Grable] Greenpeace article that was referenced earlier, so that you can go check it out, the Big Oil article that was mentioned. And so with that, we just want to again acknowledge that we’re learners and pay our respect to the Indigenous and Native women that we’ve learned from through these resources, and we hope that you’ve learned something as well.
KAY: Awesome. I reiterate twofold what Stephanie has mentioned. Thank you for joining our podcast.