Yellowfish to speak on crisis of missing, murdered Indigenous women

Jodi Voice Yellowfish (Muscogee Creek, Oglala Lakota and Cherokee) will speak about the history and current realities of the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies, 1155 Q St. in Lincoln.

Yellowfish is founder and chair of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Texas Rematriate, a Dallas-based organization that helps Indigenous families search for and bring home missing and murdered relatives; supports and offers healing processes to those families; and advocates for social change.

There is a disproportionate rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirits in the United States and Canada. A 2018 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute listed murder as the third-leading cause of death of American Indian and Alaskan Native women ages 10-24. Yellowfish will speak about the crisis’s history, contributing factors and current efforts.

The free public event, part of the center’s Paul A. Olson lecture series, is in conjunction with the Great Plains Art Museum exhibition “Supporting Indigenous Sisters: An International Print Exchange.” The exhibition, which runs through Dec. 16, involves 16 artists from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds. The portfolio was created to help begin conversations about missing and murdered Indigenous women at many levels.