The 2020 Jeannette Rankin Civil Liberties Awards go to Ivan and Ivy MacDonald. We're honoring these filmmaker/activist siblings because of their profound commitment to Indigenous justice.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) has been a part of their lives since they first remember. In the early eighties, their 8 year-old cousin, Monica Still Smoking, was kidnapped and murdered. Her loss had an acute effect on their family.
This loss also put them on a powerful trajectory: to tell the heartwrenching stories of MMIW through their film When They Were Here, to raise awareness of MMIW, and to push for legislative change.
Ivan also works with Indigenous people entangled in the criminal justice system and works to get people mental health care and legal support. Ivy was recently named a Native American Filmmaker Fellow at the 2019 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival as well as a Fourth World Media Fellow at the Seattle International Film Festival.
In 2018, we were honored to have Ivan and Ivy present their work at the ACLU National Conference in Washington D.C.
Because of their unwavering commitment to Indigenous justice, and their work to lift up the voices of the communities in which they work, we honor these exceptional Montanans.
For more on their project, read here.
