Fashion #2

The idea behind this piece was to show through fashion the inattention to indigenous people's missing and murdered loved ones as well as other issues that are ignored by the government.  I wanted to focus especially on the MMIW movemnet. This stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The percentage of missing indigenous people is significantly higher than the percentage of the population that is indigenous. This issue I think is not talked about if focused on nearly enough so I tried to bring this problem to the foreground with this sustained investigation.

I used printed pictures of protests for indigenous rights, specifically the MMIW movement to weave a skirt. The color of many of the signs is red, as red is a color that represents violence, strength, and is often used to represent death in indigenous culture. The red handprint is a symbol used by both indigenous and non indigenous people to protest the lack of attention given to the missing indigenous people. I chose to weave these strips of paper because in indigenous culture weaving is a way of connecting people both literally and figuratively. Weaving baskets is a skill that is taught to young ones by those who are older bringing generations together, but it is also a symbol as weaving together generations with the  weaving materials. I made a skirt because the ribbon skirt in indigenous culture is representative of identity, resilience and survival. This relates to the rest of the material because in order to continue to fight for indigenous rights one must have incredible resilience and strength. 

I started with a sketch and was originally going to make a woven skirt with just maybe a lighter red and put the red hand print on the skirt. When I wove the skirt though, it was too small and too loose for the red handprint to really work. I did lots of research on the meaning of all of my materials and methods to try to avoid appropriation as much as possible. I printed out lots of photos of protests for indigenous rights then cut the red signs into strips. I first glues the circles then wove the vertical strips. I didn't quite do enough planning on the structural side, because halfway through I found out that you can't tightly weave straight non-tapered strands around a circle. My skirt ended up being really loosely woven and a little misshapen, but I didn't have time or energy to start again.