Pick Up Your Pen Contest Northern Arizona Book Festival - I Shot a Photo by Bazhnibah
I shot a photo of women laced with yards of pent-up anger—each victim encircled with red skirts, wrapped with ribbon, displaying bands of hope, healing with ceremony, as if to disband their feelings of despair. Beautiful plumes of reds, oranges, and blues swayed with wavering movements on their heads. Tribes gathered in groups honored brothers and sisters; each came from the East, West, and in between. Standing strong with prayer on the steps of the Interior Department property, women in red huddled with humbled buckskin medicine bags left from the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee massacres. The songs they sang echoed cries of the victims, pleas for help, and whimpers of fading life. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED. Poster. The US Department of the Interior, C-Street and 19 th Street, Washington, DC. Indigenous Peoples March. Photograph by Bazhnibah. I shot a photo of a woman carrying a sign, wearing a red dress, with a red hand painted over her mouth—a symbol of silence, a
