Thirty-five red dresses hung on winter-bare trees lining the Riverwalk along the National Museum of the American Indian. A woman pushing a stroller stopped to watch the garments twist in the wind, staring at the smallest dress in the collection – one that would fit a little girl.

The REDress Project is a haunting outdoor art installation in Washington DC by Canadian artist Jaime Black meant to symbolize the epidemic of violence against indigenous women and girls.

“Every visitor will have a different experience with the dresses,” said Machel Monenerkit, the deputy director of the National Museum of American Indian. “But you cannot walk through this installation and not have some emotional experience.”

For years and at astonishing rates, Native women in the United States, Canada and across the continent have gone missing or been murdered. Native American women are 10 times more likely to be murdered and four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the national average, according to a recent report by the US Commission on Civil Rights.

But in the era of #MeToo and after the first two Native American women were elected to Congress in 2018, there is a renewed effort to account for the disappearances and prevent future tragedies.

‘You cannot walk through this installation and not have some emotional experience.’ Photograph: Katherine Fogden/National Museum of the American Indian

“Violence is a women’s issue but for Native women and girls, they suffer disproportionately high levels of attacks, domestic violence and rape,” Monenerkit said.

“If there is one thing we would like for our public and our visitors to the museum to remember as they walk away from this installation is the murder and missing indigenous women and the lack of attention that these women receive,” she added.

Black, a Métis artist from Winnipeg, collected hundreds of donated red dresses from the community since she first created the project in 2011. The art installation has been displayed in museums and university campuses across Canada. This is the first time the project will be displayed in the US.

Black has said she chose the color red after a friend explained that it was the only color spirits could see. In that sense, the color, she said, is a “calling back of the spirits of these women”.