Project 562

The photography project entitled Project 562 was started by a young woman named Matika Wilbur in 2012. Wilbur bought an RV after selling everything in her apartment and travels the country visiting different groups of Native Americans. In her own words, her mission with the project is "to unveil the true essence of contemporary Native issues, the beauty of Native culture, the magnitude of tradition, an expose her vitality" (Matika Wilbur). The basic structure of the projects are the portraits taken of Native Americans. Accompanying the photos on the Project 562 website are stories and quotes from the people in them. This allows Matika to achieve her goal of "unveiling the true essence" of the Native Americans.

Photograph of Tatanka Means by Matika Wilbur

Along with the portraits of Native Americans featured on the Project 562 website are portraits in a blog post entitled "5 Positive Representations of Native Americans". This blog post by Wilbur consists of more portraits with people's stories, but these stories counteract the stereotypes that are given to modern day Native Americans. One of the pictures of a man named Tatanka Means has a quote under it where Means talks about how he doesn't drink or do drugs. This is against the modern stereotype that Native Americans are drunks and stoners. This blog post is only one of many that Matika Wilbur has created for Project 562.

Other blog posts that exist on the Project 562 website are informative for events going on in the Native American community that "outsiders" might not know much about. One blog post was entitled "Still Native Land: Understanding the Movement at Standing Rock". Throughout this blog post, Matika describes the event in ways that are more easily understandable for someone who is not part of the Native American community. These blog posts exist to further help Matika Wilbur achieve her goal for the project.

Matika Wilbur with her RV "Big Girl" and her Camera

Wind River

Map of the Wind River Indian Reservation

The Wind River Indian Reservation is known for it's large crime rates. One of the articles that I read was from CNN and was about the murder of three young girls. On the day of their murder they were planning on having a sleepover. Their parents were extremely hesitant about it because of their location in the Wind River Reservation, they were concerned for their children's safety. That night, all of the girls were murdered by young boys, who had no real motive and received little punishment for their crimes. Another crime on the reservation that I read about from the New York Times was one where a young girl was murdered by her brother. While this crimes had what could be seen as a motive (the girl was caught by her brother having an affair with her step-cousin), the punishment for the crimes wasn't as severe as it would be expected to be.
I first started looking more into why all of these crimes were happening. I found out that there are less than ten police officers to patrol the area which is the size of both Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The lack of law enforcement officers makes the large crimes rates nearly impossible to handle. It is also difficult to get federal law enforcement onto reservations to handle crimes as well. I learned from the FBI that for a while, federal officers weren't allowed on reservations land, but there was a law passed that allows them to be present under certain circumstances to assist in the investigation of crimes.

Police Officers on the Wind River Indian Reservation

Another major issue involving the law enforcement of the area is the jurisdiction of the officers on reservation land. Federal law enforcement officers can only have jurisdiction if crimes are committed between two people in which one of them is an "indian" on the reservation and the other is someone of any other race. Most of the crimes at Wind River appear to be "indian" on "indian", which means that federal law enforcement has no jurisdiction over these crimes and can not assist in the investigation, be it with officers or equipment. This means that these "indian" on "indian" crimes are left up to the small amount of officers on the reservation and to the "indians" themselves. The officers on reservation lands don't have the expensive equipment or the people to use it to conduct intense investigations, and finding criminals can be difficult at times without the help of federal officers. The "indians" are not capable of doing much besides attempt to draw attention to the situation, which is seen by the parents raising awareness about the three girls that were murdered in the CNN article.
In the movie "Wind River", the director Taylor Sheridan opens up a window into the world of Wind River. He shed lights on the fact that the lack of data about the crimes in the area make it nearly impossible to speculate as to why all of these crimes are happening besides the lack of lack enforcement.