On the red carpet of the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on September 15, 2024, Reservation Dogs star D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai made a striking and powerful statement. Wearing a black tuxedo, the 22-year-old actor, of Oji-Cree First Nations descent, bore a red handprint smeared across his mouth—a bold symbol of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement.
The red handprint has become a well-known emblem of the MMIW cause, highlighting the thousands of Indigenous women and girls across North America who have been murdered or gone missing, often with little attention or action. Native Hope, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of this crisis, explains that the handprint symbolizes the silenced voices of these women.
Woon-A-Tai, who became the first Indigenous North American to be nominated in the leading actor category at the Emmys, shared the deeper significance of his gesture on Instagram. “I did this for those who ain’t here, not 4 me, not 4 y’all,” he wrote.
The statistics surrounding this crisis are staggering. In the United States, the murder rate for women living on reservations is ten times the national average, with murder ranking as the third leading cause of death for Native women, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute. In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are twelve times more likely to be murdered or go missing than their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Woon-A-Tai’s Emmy nomination came for his role as Bear Smallhill in the acclaimed FX series Reservation Dogs, a groundbreaking show written, directed, and produced by Indigenous creators, with a primarily Indigenous cast. Reflecting on his nomination, Woon-A-Tai told the Canadian Press, “I don’t know what an Emmy Award will really do for stopping issues that we face on a daily basis. It just gives us hope. It gives hope to a kid on a reservation that they could also be on that stage and do it too, and they can.”
This year’s Emmys also saw historic recognition for other Indigenous actors, including Kali Reis and Lily Gladstone, who became the first Indigenous women to be nominated in the acting category.
Woon-A-Tai’s red carpet moment served as a reminder of the ongoing genocidal crisis faced by Indigenous women and girls—a crisis recognized by organizations like Amnesty International and highlighted by a national inquiry in Canada in 2016.
