Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls - Center for Native American Studies

“Sing Our Sisters Home”
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) events at Northern Michigan University
Events sponsored by NMU’s Center for Native American Studies & NMU’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program

In the United States, American Indian/Alaskan Native people experience higher rates of violence than any other demographic.  Native women and girls, specifically, are disproportionately affected by the violence. For example, a 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice estimated that 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. There are 23 locations determined to be “hot spots” for MMIW cases, five of which are identified as being of the highest priority for intervention due to their disproportionately high rates of MMIW cases. Many of these cases are linked to hydraulic fracking across the US and seems to be a likely contributing factor in the rate of MMIW cases in nine to 16 of the identified “hot spots.” Currently in the US, despite a national movement to raise awareness to the MMIW crisis, there has yet to be any direct actions taken by the federal government. Other ‘hot spot’ areas are urban locations along highways with access to the Canadian border, such as Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and cities along the dreaded I-29 corridor. 

The issue of our Missing and Murdered Indiginous Women has been a crisis since colonization and is fueled by the romanticization of “Indian Girls” seen in the media, halloween costumes, and the fashion and beauty industry more recently. Homicide is the third leading cause of death among women and girls between 10 and 24 years of age, and the fifth leading cause of death among women between 25 and 34 years of age.  At a rate of more than 10 times the national average, over 80% of indigenous people have experienced violence in their lifetimes, and those of Indigenous ethnicity are 2.5 times as likely to experience violent crime and at least 2 times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault crimes than people of other races in the United States.

In 2019, Savanna’s Act was introduced to the US House and Senate, and was signed into law on October 10th, 2020. This new law seeks to address a number of issues contributing to the MMIW crisis, including:  clarifying the responsibilities of Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments and law enforcement agencies with respect to responding to cases of missing and murdered Indians; increasing coordination and communication between agencies; empowering Tribal governments with the resources and information necessary to “effectively” respond to cases; and increasing the collection of data relating to missing and murdered Indian men, women, and children. (S.227 - Savanna's Act 116th Congress (2019-2020). Unfortunately, we have seen how Federal, State, and local governments and law enforcement respond to crises in Indian Country, and seems to be yet another treaty potentially broken.

What Does MMIWG2S Mean?

MMIWG2S is an acronym for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits. This movement recognizes that not only is this racialized violence, but gendered violence, mainly against feminized bodies, but also extending to men and Two-spirits whose genders do not conform to the colonial, binary gender system.