When 22-year-old Long Island native
Gabby Petito went missing in early September, it made
headlines across the country. When her strangled body was found in Wyoming 8
days later, the news coverage only intensified. One thing to note: Gabby Petito was white. This point is not lost on Heather Bruegl, director of education at Forge
Project and a member of the
Oneida/Stockbridge Munsee Nation. Native American women are more than twice as
likely to experience violence than any other demographic in the US. One in
three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67 percent of
these assaults are perpetrated by other races. Cases of violence against
Indigenous women rarely make headlines, however. In her talk “She’s Gone Missing(The Epidemic You Don’t Hear
About): Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,”Bruegl examines this epidemic of
violence at Hudson Hall in Hudson on November 5 at 6pm.
I spoke with Bruegl
about the violence perpetrated against Indigenous women as well as Forge
Project, a new initiative to support Indigenous
leaders in culture, education, food security, and land justice in Columbia
County.
What is Forge Project and how does it
come about?
Heather Bruegl: Forge Project is an Indigenous-led organization
focusing on those in the Indigenous communities who work in land justice,
climate activism, cultural awareness—”like just all these amazing things that
are going on in Indian country. And we support those artists and those
activists by a fellowship where they can work in their communities to continue
to do good across Indian country and in their communities. But also we support Indigenous artists, living contemporary
Indigenous artists, because they don’t get the same type of coverage that
non-Indigenous artists get. So we want to bring
awareness to that as well, having a collection of art that is a lending and
teaching collection so it’s not just a collection of art that stays at Forge.
It’s meant to go out into the world so that people can look at it and learn
from it.
And then also forming think tanks in
groups around MMIW [missing and murdered Indigenous women] and land back and,
language revitalization and all of these great things that we can do with the
resources that we have in order to help bring awareness to things that are
going on in Indian country.
Why
is Forge in upstate New York?
Heather Bruegl: Forge is in upstate New York because the house
that houses our fellowships and our art collection was designed by Ai Weiwei and that’s where the house that he designed is
located. One of our founders, Becky Gochman,
purchased that home and it just so happens to be located on the ancestral homelands
of the Mohican people, part of my ancestors, and that community today is known
as the Stockbridge-Munsee community. And they’re located in Bowler, Wisconsin.
You
describe yourself as an “accidental activist.” Why do you describe yourself
that way?
Heather Bruegl:
Because I didn’t start out doing this
work to be an activist or to march or protest or anything like that. I’m a
historian by training. So I wanted to use that to
educate the world more about Indigenous history. It turned out in the course of
doing that, it was bringing awareness to Indigenous causes. So whether that’s
stopping pipelines or bringing awareness to the missing and murdered Indigenous
women’s epidemic, or raising awareness of the issues that surround the Indian Child Welfare Act and how that’s being threatened. So
in the course of educating people, you’re bringing awareness to it, people want
to do stuff and they want to know how they can be involved and help more. The
activism form of this work kind of really was an accident. It wasn’t meant to
be that, but little did I know that by educating people, it was really a form
of activism that I didn’t even see coming.
Can
you explain the context of the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous
women? What’s the history here?
Heather Bruegl: You could easily go back to the history of MMIW
starting with colonialism, when settlers came across. One of the first known
victims of MMIW is Pocahontas. You learn about her in history class, but they
don’t tell you she was 10 years old. You think she’s much older because it’s
romanticized, it’s mythologized. She saved the life of John Smith and there was
this great love affair and blah, blah, blah. But what they don’t tell you: she
was 10 years old. She was held captive on an English ship. When she came off
that ship, she was pregnant. She was forced to give up her Indigenous ways and
she ends up dying in England after they parade her around as enlightened
savage. And she never sees her homelands again.
And there’s this purity complex. If you
are a non-white woman, if you’re black or brown, it’s easy to be looked at as
less-than. We did it with enslaved women that were brought over from Africa. We
did it with the Indigenous women that were here already on this continent.
You’re looked at as less-thans, you’re treated as
less-thans. So you go
missing, nobody cares; you’re assaulted, nobody cares. That’s how this
epidemic, I think, has stayed in the shadows for so long, because nobody cares
when an Indigenous woman goes missing, when a black or a brown woman goes
missing, because there’s so much historically put on us that our voices just
aren’t heard.
Think
of the tragic case of Gabby Petito, who went
missing—this young, white woman. From the time she was
reported missing to the time that her remains were found was eight days. And we
have women in our communities and across Indian country who have been missing
for eight years or more. There’s no end in sight, really. And so I think it’s important to talk about those discrepancies
and the inequality that happens when it comes to an Indigenous woman being
missing, as opposed to a white woman who goes missing, not to say that that
case is not tragic. It is tragic. It’s very sad. A young girl lost her life and
that should not have happened, but the nation came together. It became a case
of the nation looking for her, the nation lost her. Whereas when an Indigenous
woman goes missing, sometimes you can’t even get the BIA [Bureau of Indian
Affairs] police or the FBI involved until a certain amount of time goes
by.
What can people do to aid and support
the effort to bring more attention to MMIW?
Heather Bruegl:
People can educate themselves about it
and they can become just as angry about when an Indigenous woman goes missing
as a young white woman. Then, when a non-Indigenous woman goes missing, have
that same passion and have that same fight for those women as well. I think
that’s one thing that can happen. I think also putting pressure on your
representatives, whether that is state representatives or your national
representatives to pass and support laws that protect Indigenous women.
I think we’re going to see hopefully
some changes with Deb Haaland at the Department of
the Interior. I’m very grateful for Deb Haaland being
in her position because she knows what’s going on in Indian country. It’s
something as an Indigenous woman, you think about almost every day. I don’t
live in a high crime area, but I am constantly aware of my surroundings. And I
text my husband constantly when I’m going to the grocery store or leaving the
grocery store just so he knows where I’m at. With Deb Haaland
leading at Interior, I think we’ll see some changes because she gets it and I
think it’s important. If you’re not an Indigenous person it’s hard to get, but
I think you can educate yourself about it. You can learn more about it and
understand that this isn’t just a history that’s popped up in recent times.
This is a history that is older than the founding of the United States.
This article appears in October 2021.
