Deer Women Dancing

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores how Indigenous activist-artists have made interventions in the sexual and gender violence crisis that affects Turtle Island (North American) Indigenous communities. Based on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, it argues that Indigenous activist-artists have created a visual language that supports the goals of the #MeToo movement while also opening a uniquely Indigenous space. The author examines three major visual artifacts: the Red Dress, the Jingle Dress Dance/r, and the Red Handprint; these materials—in both their symbolic and physical presence—have helped generate a viral language that counters settler-colonial narratives of sexual and gender violence. This chapter concludes with an examination of Indigenous hashtag activism and how these strategies both intersect with and differentiate themselves from #MeToo. This chapter aims to make further intervention into how Indigenous communities have responded to not only #MeToo, but also the historical and contemporary crisis facing Indigenous communities.