How The Ignorance Surrounding Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Has Sparked a Movement
Violent crime rates against indigenous women are alarming, and they often receive very little attention from law enforcement and the media. This fact has caused indigenous groups to work on their own to gain justice for the victims and bring awareness to the issue.
Violence against Indigenous Women
Indigenous women are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than all other ethnicities. However, they rarely receive justice for these crimes. These crimes, especially murders, and abductions, are often ignored and unsolved.
Lack of investigation is often due to communication, jurisdictional, and attention issues. Many of these crimes are ignored by law enforcement and media alike. Movements and organizations have been formed to help bring these victims the justice they’ve been lacking.
Crime Rates
The Urban Indian Health Institute put together a study analyzing the data of missing and murdered indigenous women from numerous cities. The study identifies 506 cases, but the report also clarifies that this is likely an undercount.
Murderers are the third leading cause of death among indigenous women. In 2016, 5,712 murdered or missing indigenous women and girls were reported, but only 116 cases were logged in the Department of Justice database. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that approximately 4,200 missing and murder cases have gone unsolved.
Statistics on violence against indigenous women are difficult to find in government databases due to it being underreported and undercovered by law enforcement. So many individual groups have done their own research.
Native Women’s Wilderness lists more statistics on their website pulled from outside research or government data. They found that 84.3% of Indigenous women have experienced violence and are 1.7 times more likely to experience violence than Anglo-American women. They also experience a murder rate three times higher than Anglo-American women. Non-Native people on Native-owned land commit the majority of these murders.
Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women
Many of these violent crimes and murders are ignored or unreported. National or international media never covered more than 95% of the reported cases. Many Indigenous founded, and run organizations have brought attention to this issue on their own. Many aim to raise awareness of the problem and help bring justice to the victims.
The red handprint over the mouth has become a powerful symbol of the movement. This symbolizes the “missing sisters whose voices are not heard. It stands for the silence of the media and law enforcement in the midst of this crisis. It stands for the oppression and subjugation of Native women who are now rising up to say #NoMoreStolenSisters.”
Indigenous people have been routinely ignored and forgotten by the federal government. This has led to an unprecedentedly high violent crime rate against them.
With the federal government still doing little to help them and stripping away more rights from indigenous groups, such as the SCOTUS case that could overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, indigenous groups have had to bring awareness to these crimes on their own to try and bring justice for the victims.
