"Sisters Rising" evening virtual international film screening and workshop
Exploring the links between Equinor shale oil production, violence against Indigenous women and girls (#MMIWG), and human rights instruments
(Registration required!)
In the past decade, tribal communities in the United States and Canada have pointed to the dramatic increase in sexual violence, trafficking, and murder of Native women and girls from reservations within areas of shale oil production. One example is the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota home of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikira Nation – which is at the epicenter of the Bakken shale oil (“fracking”) production boom. With the oil industry, came a large influx of male transient workers, many of them registered sex offenders, living in “man camps” on or near reservations. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that tribal governments have no jurisdiction to prosecute non-Natives who commit felonies on tribal lands, and the United States federal authorities with jurisdiction have been largely indifferent to Native women’s fundamental human rights.
Equinor has a major investment in the Bakken shale oil production and claims to have a human rights policy defined within UN principles. Together with our guests, we will discuss the implications of human rights policies "on the ground" and reflect on Native American women’s engagement with systems change on the grass-roots level. Through truth-telling and storied activism, Native women and their allies are making explicit the links between ongoing extractive colonialism, tribal sovereignty, climate change, and gendered/ racialized violence.
Join the Centre for Women's and Gender Research for an evening virtual film screening and workshop with special guests filmmakers Willow O'Feral and Brad Heck, and Sarah Deer (Creek) Professor of Gender Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Law and author of Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America (2015). Guests are invited to screen the film digitally and join in the workshop through Zoom after the screening. Registrants will receive links and passwords for the screening and Zoom room by email no later than 48 hours before the event.
Our guests will be joining us through Zoom from the United States.
Film Synopsis
Sisters Rising is the story of six Native American women reclaiming personal
and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing sexual violence against Indigenous
women in the United States.
Dawn was in the Army, now she’s a tribal cop in the midst of the North Dakota
oil boom. Sarah is an attorney and scholar fighting to overturn restrictions on
tribal sovereignty. Patty teaches Indigenous women’s self-defense workshops.
Loreline and Lisa are grassroots advocates working outside of the system to
support survivors of violence and influence legislative change. Chalsey is writing
the first anti-sex trafficking code to be introduced to a reservation’s tribal
court.
Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault
than all other American women. Amnesty International found that 1 in 3 Native
women reports having been raped during her lifetime and that 86% of the
offenses are committed by non-Native men. Non-Indian perpetrators exploit
gaps in tribal jurisdictional authority and target Native women as ‘safe victims’
with near-impunity.
In a portrait of six brave participants who refuse to let a pattern of violence
against Native women continue on in the shadows, this film shines an unflinching
and ultimately uplifting light onto righting injustice on both an individual and
systemic level.
About the Panelists
SARAH DEER is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a professor at the University of Kansas. Her 2015 book, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America is the culmination of over 25 years of working with survivors. A lawyer by training but an advocate in practice, her scholarship focuses on the intersection of federal Indian law and victims' rights, using Indigenous feminist principles as a framework. Her work to end violence against Native women has received national awards from the American Bar Association and the Department of Justice. In 2019, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She currently teaches at the University of Kansas (her alma mater), where she holds a joint appointment in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the School of Public Affairs and Administration. Professor Deer is also the Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals.