May 5 marks the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Native women face murder rates more than 10 times the national average. Here in Montana, Indigenous women are four times more likely to go missing.
MTN is sharing some of the stories from the MMIW crisis; some of which you might know, some of which you won't.
Driving across Montana means driving by thousands of billboards. Each has a message to share, but some are telling a story for those who can no longer tell their own. They dot the skyline from the Wye to St. Ignatius to Glacier Park International Airport and beyond. They tell the stories of the MMIW crisis.
“I hope that when people look at the images on the billboards that they see a mother or a daughter or a sister or a family member that are wanting that attention,” said Jen Murphy. “That they feel like that gut reaction of 'Wow, what is going on? What is this? How can I get involved? How can we make this better?'"
Jen Murphy, a tribal liaison and advocate, lived in Missoula when Jermain Charlo went missing in 2018. Charlo’s disappearance set her off on a new trajectory.
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"I had kind of that upfront look at the case and just really had a draw to figure out how to do something to raise awareness on the issue,” she said.
That draw turned into the MMIW Project. Murphy started taking pictures of people impacted by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis and putting them up on billboards, which eventually went up across the state and beyond. Each shares a face, mouth covered by the red handprint symbolizing the crisis.
"Photography, it's creating that visceral response where you just wanna do something,” she said.
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She has worked a lot with the families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, like Valenda Underwood, Jermain Charlo’s aunt, and Carissa Heavy Runner, Mika Westwolf’s mother.
“It feels like they're my family,” she said. “I try to do what I can, in my scope of what I'm doing, as if it was my niece, my daughter.”
But Murphy’s MMIW project billboards are not the only ones calling attention to the crisis. Just south of St. Ignatius, on the turn off for the Old Highway 93, a billboard reads “Need help searching for a loved one? Funding may be available.”
The billboard also shares a website — snowbirdfund.org. Through the Montana Community Foundation, the Snowbird Fund supports families looking for Indigenous loved ones, families that are often alone in their search.
"I think the fund has been an incredible resource for so many families,” said Ivan MacDonald, a filmmaker and committee member for the Snowbird Fund. "They're like, you know, ‘No one's going to do it outside of us, so let's do the work ourselves'."
The Snowbird Fund has dispersed around $80,000 of private funding and donations to families over the last 2½ years.
"I've seen the funds be used from everything to print posters to gas, to travel back and forth,” MacDonald said. “I've seen families use the funds from everything from paying for a boat to be able to do radar in a lake where a possible loved one was last seen to training search and rescue dogs.”
The Snowbird Fund aims to immediately connect families to the resources needed to mount search and rescue operations. An all-Indigenous committee — including MacDonald — work to respond to funding requests the day they come in.
They also keep in touch with families throughout the process.
“I think, at the end of the day, the best work that we can do in this movement, outside of pressuring lawmakers, pressuring powers that be, is just to support families,” MacDonald said.
But in order to help families, they need to know about it. The Snowbird Fund worked with Murphy to put up the billboard in St. Ignatius, featuring one of her MMIW project photographs.
"I work a lot with the Snowbird Fund because they're amazing, bringing that money right to the families when someone goes missing,” Murphy said.
MacDonald told MTN that billboards like this bring needed visibility to an under-recognized problem.
“People feel that it's just a Native problem, just a reservation problem. But, actually, most research shows that a large percentage of the cases where Indigenous women go missing or experience rates of violence are off reservation in urban areas,” MacDonald said. “I don't think people really understand that, as much as this happens on reservations and reservation communities, it's probably just as present outside of those, in urban areas such as Missoula, Billings, Great Falls.”
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Some billboards offer resources, like the Snowbird Fund one outside of St. Ignatius. Some search for information, like the missing persons one for Jermain Charlo near the Wye. Some are reminders, like Murphy’s MMIW project ones. But all the billboards aim to tell the stories behind the MMIW crisis.
"I think what keeps me doing this is being a mother of three daughters. I want the world to look differently for them as they grow, that they know that if they went missing that they would be looked for the same as anyone else and I want that for all of our youth. I want the next generation to not feel this."
Donations can be made online to the Snowbird Fund, which go towards helping families, or to Murphy’s MMIW Project, to continue putting up billboards.
“I would be a liar if I said it didn't take a toll on my own central nervous system, but I think that's the story of our people anyway. Pushing through even when things are hard and being able to be a voice for the voiceless and being able to speak up even when you're like, ‘Am I the right person?’” Murphy said. “Putting these billboards up really does make a difference on the awareness, piece by piece.”
Watch: Special Report: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
