With no other options, she signed up. She fell in love with it instantly.

“I loved going to school and then seventh period was art class, and I would just put my headphones in and just paint the entire period and it was like the best, best time of the day, just to be able to sit there and paint and not really have to think about other things,” Cloud said.

Now 23, Cloud will use her painting skills for advocacy through the Center for Native American Youth’s Remembering Our Sisters Fellowship. She is one of six fellows chosen to develop art and storytelling projects that raise awareness about MMIWG2S+.

MMIWG2S+ stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirits+, sometimes broadened to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP).

Native Americans go missing and are killed at disproportionately high rates. Although Indigenous people make up only 6.7% of Montana’s population, they account for, on average, a fourth of the state’s active missing persons cases.

The fellowship is intended to empower and uplift young Indigenous women and femme-identifying people to raise awareness, push for policies that address the crisis and honor those affected by it, according to the Center’s website. Fellows receive resources, funding and mentorship to support their projects.

For Cloud, who is Crow, the crisis is personal. Her mother’s mother, Ilene LaForge, was killed by a non-native boyfriend when Cloud’s mother was about a year old. The man who killed her was sentenced in 1977 to 15 to 20 years in Wyoming’s state penitentiary, according to a Casper Star-Tribune article published that year.

The resulting trauma from LaForge’s death has reverberated through generations, Cloud said.

“I can look back and see that her losing her mom affected her, but it not only affected her, it affected us,” she said, referring to herself and her three siblings.

Cloud graduated from Montana State University Billings in 2022 with a double major in psychiatric rehabilitation and sociology and a minor in Native American studies. For her senior thesis, she interviewed Native women about their perceptions of safety at MSUB in regard to MMIP.

“So doing that project and then just living in Montana where MMIP is really high, having that connection with my family, it just made me want to spread awareness even more,” Cloud said.

Amber Peretz, who worked with Cloud in MSUB’s Native American Achievement Center, said Cloud would consistently bring up the crisis during meetings and was always “gracefully open” to explaining MMIP to those who were less informed.

“You could tell this was something at the front of her mind, and it’s just going to be like a seed she plants, you know,” Peretz said.

Sunny Day Real Bird, Cloud’s supervisor at the Native American Achievement Center, said Cloud often took the lead on the Center’s initiatives and seemed passionate about supporting Native students, especially those from reservations.

“I just know she really wants to bring awareness and justice for critical issues, and I know she has that voice within the community and I know there’s a lot of people at her age who have a lot of respect for her,” Real Bird said. “And then I think by using her platform to highlight these stories, I think that really speaks volumes.”

For her fellowship project, Cloud plans on creating a series of 10 oil paintings inspired by famous Renaissance artworks. She plans on hosting an art auction for the paintings on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October.

One painting will depict Tom Torlino, a Navajo man who went to boarding school in the 1880s, as the Mona Lisa. Another, based on a painting of mourners grieving Jesus Christ, will portray the grief the families of MMIP victims experience.

Cloud also plans to highlight Native culture with her paintings, including one painting that will depict a woman in a Crow elk tooth dress and another that will focus on themes of sisterhood.

Cloud chose Renaissance artworks because she feels that many artistic representations focus on Native culture as it was pre-colonization, with depictions of horses and tipis. Although these depictions are beautiful, Cloud said she’s never seen a native artist do a Renaissance panting from a Native perspective, and she wanted to do something different.

She also said the Renaissance art style could help combat negative stereotypes of Native women portrayed in media.

“Sometimes it’s hard, and it feels like people don’t see us as human sometimes, so I just hope this would remind them that yes, we have families, we work in this community, we’re a part of the community too,” Cloud said.

Proceeds from the art auction will go to the Snowbird Fund, which supports searches for missing Indigenous people in Montana. Cloud said she wants the auction, which will take place in Billings, to also act as a community event, with resources for guests to learn more about MMIP, register to vote and sign up for self-defense courses.

“I don’t want it to be a super sad event, even though it is a pretty heavy topic,” Cloud said. “I want it to be more empowering and uplifting and just for people to gain awareness of it and take action to see what they can do.”