What is MMIW+?
Art installation inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black at Seaforth Peace Park, Vancouver, Canada on the National Day for Vigils for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 2016.
What is MMIW+?
MMIW+ stands for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, and the “plus” to include girls, teens, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary genders.
You may also see MMIR (“R” for relatives), MMIP (people), MMIWG2S (women, girls, & Two-Spirit), and other acronyms to signify that this is an expansive issues for women, girls, and those outside a Westernized understanding of the gender binary.
MMIW+ is an epidemic across what we call North America.
The risk of rape or sexual assault is 2.5 times higher for Native women than the rest of the country. Murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women. These numbers likely underestimate the true extent of violence due to systematic racism, underreporting, misclassification, and ongoing distrust of law enforcement.
In Canada, it is described as a national crisis and a genocide. Infamous is the Highway of Tears, a 450 mile corridor as the site for MMIW since 1970. In the United States, there is little public awareness. Violence against women, girls, and Two-Spirit individuals is a legacy of racism, sexism, and colonialism, which has culminated into this human rights crisis.
Indigenous Peoples go missing 3 times:
1. In life:
A loved one goes missing. Then finding justice and accountability becomes incredibly hard for loved ones.
When their loved one goes missing or is found unalive, they should be grieving – instead, they are fighting for answers, they are organizing search & rescue, fundraising, and are the boots on the ground when law enforcement and other agencies are not taking these matters seriously until it’s too late.
2. In the media:
There is a severe lack of media and coverage of the MMIW+ epidemic. The silence has been long and deafening.
The misrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples happens too often - a long history of racism, oppression, genocide, stereotypes, hypersexualization and fetishization of Indigenous women, girls and peoples since 1492. The media’s responsibility is to report the facts, help amplify, and humanize the missing or murdered Person.
3. In the data:
Law enforcement and localities fail to record and keep records on how many Indigenous women are experiencing violence or go missing. Without proper data, it’s hard to understand the totality of the MMIW+ epidemic.
In 2016, 5,712 Indigenous women and girls were reported missing and ONLY 116 were logged into the Department of Justice database. Accurate documentation and reporting needs to be reflected. Sadly, Congressional and governmental action only occurs with sufficient data to prompt any sort of action like policy, allocation of funds and resources, trainings and more.
Adapted from @rising_hearts
Statistics from a survey of 71 cities across the United States:
506
MMIWG cases were identified across 71 selected urban cities
128
were cases of missing Indigenous women
280
were cases of murdered indigenous women
98
were cases with an “unknown status”
29
was the median age of MMIWG victims
153
cases were identified that did not exist in law enforcement records
From the Urban Indian Health Institute
Urban Indian Health Institute
Urban Indian Health Institute, a division of the Seattle Indian Health Board, has been the gold standard for collecting data relating to MMIW+. UIHI’s mission is “decolonizing data, for Indigenous people, by Indigenous people.” Despite this ongoing crisis, very little is known about the victimization of Native women living in urban settings, and UIHI is ensuring that they are no longer seen as invisible in life, in the media, and in the data.
Their mission to offer a larger picture of this crisis while also supporting Indigenous communities is why I’m hoping we can support them.
“We have always known that violence against Native women was an issue, but people refused to acknowledge it. We are showing that data is going to be important to bring change and that more research is urgently needed to protect our women and girls.”
