Anisa Navarro

AES 398
4/27/2022
Midterm

Missing Murdered Indigenous Women

The theme concept I wish to discuss is the MMIW. Missing murdered indigenous women is a

prevalent issue in our country and has been since the colonization of these lands. The issue of

human trafficking within the indigenous community is one that is turned a side eye on, and

ignored due to the lack of national attention, and federal laws to bring justice to the survivors.

The term MMIW (missing murdered indigenous women) is a social justice movement that began

in Canada to raise awareness of the violence against indigenous women and girls in the United

States and Canada, (Valoria, week 2). The third leading cause of death for young indigenous

women is murder, as they are 10x more likely to be murdered than their non-indigenous

counterparts. This number is exacerbated even more when 4 out of every 5 indigenous women

will have been a victim of sexual or physical violence, (Valoria, week 2). In addition to that, The

Seattle Times has recorded that 94% of indigenous women have acknowledged that they were

coerced into sexual activity or raped at least once in their life. With all these statistics and

numbers to show how dire and important the issue of MMIW is in our country, the real scope of

issues is not aware. Data regarding the violence against indigenous women and children are

skewed as events go unrecorded, and indigenous women are racially misclassified in databases,

which prevents them from being included in MMIW reports.

There are a multitude of systemic barriers that have come in between legal legislation from

taking accountability and working on a plan to prevent and bring justice to indigenous

communities. One of them is that attention is not directed towards these indigenous communities
as they are a marginalized population. Although at times of the event they will get misclassified

in documents as white women, to the media and society, they are indigenous, and thus the

systemic bias pushes media attention away from them and on to other issues. Another barrier is

an environmental one, indigenous women who were violated on reservations have little to no

access to the internet or phone services due to their distance from the main city. The land that

was allotted to them from the United States government was strategically placed miles away

from most communities, ostracizing them and eventually cutting them off from many resources,

like the internet. This in turn leads to the reservations law enforcement to have a lack in

resources, staff, and be underdeveloped in comparison to other cities. With the United States

titling indigenous reservations as sovereign land, the government does not touch any crime or

event that includes its community, unless it is connected to a non-indigenous individual, (CBS

News). In that case, the crime will go to the federal government where it will not progress into

anything.

However there have been localized efforts that garnered national support and made its way to

become a federal law in support of ending violence against Indigenous women. One of the

federal acts, is Savanna’s Act. Savanna’s Act was created in the aftermath of the kidnapping and

murder of Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind. The federal law that was created in her name, is to

direct what steps to take at a federal and government level, in aiding the tribal law enforcement

to find the perpetrator and bring justice to women, just like Savanna, (CBS News). Another act

that was created is the Violence against Woman’s Act. This act is specifically to address the

issue of violence perpetrated by people who do not live in the tribal lands against indigenous

women. Before this federal law, non-tribal members who committed a crime against a tribal

member were only held liable in a federal court of law, which sometimes didn’t even bring
justice at all. However, with the Violence Against Woman’s Act, tribal law enforcement can

carry out justice on their end, as well as continue to have the perpetrator charged in a federal

level, (CBS News).

In my life I have been privileged to not fall victim to the violence often experienced by

indigenous women at a higher rate. However, this issue impacts my community of indigenous

and Hispanic members, as peace cannot be truly experienced unless all the members of my

community are freed from the injustice that holds them down.

Bush, Evan. “New Report Highlights Flaws in Police Data on Missing, Murdered Indigenous
Women and Girls.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 7 June 2019,
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/new-report-highlights-flaws-in-police-data-on-
missing-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls/.

Pao, Maureen. “Savanna's Act Addresses Alarming Number of Missing or Killed Native
Women.” NPR, NPR, 28 Sept. 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-
for-racial-justice/2020/09/28/917807372/savannas-act-addresses-alarming-numbers-of-
missing-or-murdered-native-women.

Segers, Grace. “Congress Tackles Crisis of Missing and Murdered Native American Women.”
CBS News, CBS Interactive, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-crisis-missing-and-
murdered-native-american-women/.

Veloria, Velma. (2022) Missing Murdered Indigenous Women, University of Washington AES

392: MMIW, Trafficking in Schools, Organ Trafficking lecture slides.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DquKiP9-PNX53FUvIxbW6myphYI1d5TG/view