Portraits of Resilience
A documentary photographer turns her lens on the family members of Indigenous women who have disappeared or died
Last spring, documentary photographer Sara Hylton travelled across Saskatchewan, where more than 50 percent of missing or murdered women and girls are Indigenous— one of the highest proportions in the country. Working with Ntawnis Piapot, a local Cree journalist, Hylton met with community elders, victims’ families, and women willing to share their experiences. The photographs, a selection of which appears here, feature nearly thirty Indigenous people whose loved ones have disappeared or died.
In the months since Hylton launched her project, the families she spoke with have watched as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which aims to identify systemic roots of violence against Indigenous people, struggles to recover from the bureaucratic and political missteps it has made.
Several of the inquiry ’ s staff members, including one of the five commissioners, have resigned. Indigenous families and advocates across the country say its architects should have consulted communities and victims’ relatives during the planning process and are calling for a “hard reset.”
The inquiry’s failures add a new dimension to Hylton’s images, which seek to portray the suffering and the “resilience, sisterhood, and femininity” of communities that are waiting for answers and concrete change.