BUTTE — A Butte-based artist and activist has been using her photographic eye to bring awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous people and for one grandmother gathered here at the Butte library for the artist talk, the issue hits way too close to home for her.
"What brought me here today, painfully, is that this isn’t talked about," says Kim Leathers. "The hardest part was that I needed to let my granddaughter know because she is one of the targets."
Leathers is a member of the Little Shell Tribe, and she works as a counselor in Butte. She says she made a difficult decision to bring her twelve-year-old granddaughter along, even though the Missing and Murder Indigenous Women topic is somber and even scary.
"I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want to scare her, but I have to warn her. So, she can be safe. She needs to be safe. Right? That’s why we’re here," says Leathers.
On her way to the artist talk, Leathers walks past portraits of family members of the missing. She and her granddaughter join a dozen others—some dressed in ribbon skirts with bright red hand prints covering their faces—an outfit that symbolizes the movement.
"This is such an important topic," says Jen Murphy. "This isn’t just a photograph. This is something that’s happening to our people and has happened to our people since the beginning of time."
For almost a decade, Murphy, a member of the Chippewa-Cree Tribe, has been working with the families of missing Native women to bring awareness to the issue through a billboard campaign, a children's book, and even as a producer of an Oscar-qualifying short film.
She tells the audience she was inspired to use her camera to help bring attention to missing Native women because the issue is not well covered when Native women go missing. Murphy says after her initial shoot, she felt uncertain about the project, not knowing if the content was expressing the message that needed to be shared.
"I remember as I was developing these photos, there was this one photo in particular that really felt like my ancestors were looking through my soul and were like you have to keep doing this," Murphy tells the audience.
According to data from the National Congress of American Indians, in Montana, Native women make up just under 7 percent of the population but are four times more likely to go missing compared to non-Native women. Indigenous women make up 60 percent of the missing person cases in Montana and most of those cases involve juveniles.
Murphy encourages the audience to reach out to tribes to become involved in the issue.
"One of the biggest things that I want people to know is that they can get involved and they can do something. How would you want your daughter or your mother, or your son looked for if they went missing? Kinda sorta? Or full-on Gabby Petito style type a way," says Murphy.
"This is a brave little girl. She just got tougher, stronger, because she’s the future, and if I don’t protect her and her life, then I’m wrong."
Jen Murphy's photo exhibition is on view in the Carle Gallery in the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library through the month of May.
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