NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS

While we are still living through a pandemic, Indigenous tribes across North America have been dealing with an epidemic affecting their women and young girls.

words by Alycia Cypress | art by Anastasia Powell

With pipelines and oil drills forcing their way onto reservations across the country, more and more Indigenous women are “mysteriously” disappearing or even worse, being murdered. Native American communities are severely underserved and repeatedly taken advantage of by large corporations determined to use sacred Native land as a way to expand their companies’ reach. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement has taken over Indian country in the last few years, with thousands of Natives calling out the U.S. government and big money corporations for their disgusting complacency.

In 2017, the movie Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, hit the big screen. It tells the story of a wildlife officer (Renner) and FBI agent (Olsen) who try to solve a murder of a young Indigenous girl, Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow), on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

Spoiler alert: Natalie’s new boyfriend worked at a nearby oil drilling site and his co-workers raped and murdered Natalie. They also killed her boyfriend. None of them were going to be prosecuted if it weren’t for the two protagonists’ continued heroic attempts.

Now this film has some issues, specifically the fact that it perpetuates the ever-so-popular white savior complex, caters to a majority white male audience, portrays Natives as living in a constant state of sadness and lacks an Indigenous cast.

But the film has an overall important message and ends with a chilling fact: “While missing persons statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women… No one knows how many are missing.” After the film made waves following its release, another scary statistic presented itself. In 2016, 5,712 Native women were either missing or murdered and only 116 of those cases were entered into the U.S. Department of

Justice’s official missing persons list, according to Urban Indian Health Institute. The only way we know that these women are missing is because their tribes file their cases, but the American government does not.

As a Native woman, that is terrifying to see. At times, it forces me to hide who I am in an attempt to feel safe in white society and unfortunately, experiencing violence at the hands of a boyfriend, husband, or even stranger is all too common for Indigenous women. With four out of five Indigenous women impacted by violence today, it has become a difficult issue for Indian country to ignore.

Syracuse University freshman and member of the Seneca Nation in western New York Nia Nephew said she started hearing about the MMIW movement when it started gaining attention a few years ago. She says her initial reaction was fear. “Being so young and vulnerable, the risks are already heightened, but adding the stress of the statistics of the rates Indigenous women go missing at makes life feel even more dangerous,” she said. When the issue started gaining attention, Nephew remembers seeing Seneca nation members hang red dresses outside of their houses in solidarity to those who are now missing and murdered. Nephew has lost two cousins due to violence inflicted upon them by their boyfriends. Both men served very short sentences, with one not even going to jail for murder, but instead for stealing a truck.

This is unfortunately common for many MMIW cases; most women and children do not get the justice they deserve because of federal laws. Tribal courts are only able to prosecute boyfriends and husbands of Indigenous women, but most of them still get off free. Many perpetrators are non-native men, but tribal courts cannot prosecute strangers. This is where Wind River’s plotline and the participation of big corporations come into play. Many MMIW cases occur because of the hundreds of oil drilling and pipeline construction sites and the men who house themselves near or on Native reservations. There is a very clear connection between these sites and the sexual violence the government chooses to ignore. “In 2017, U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 37 percent of Indian Country cases, citing lack of evidence in 70 percent of the cases they dropped,” according to The New Republic and data from Associated Press. There’s a severe lack of protection and care for Indigenous

women around the world, and it’ll only get worse if we continue to overlook it.

Thankfully, we may have hope. With public awareness of the issues BIPOC communities face on the rise, we have new activists fighting for Indigenous rights. The biggest hope though, is Deb Haaland, the current Interior Secretary for the U.S. Cabinet. A Native woman herself, Haaland recently created a unit in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs that will investigate the killings and disappearances of Indigenous people. CNN reports that Haaland expects the unit to help coordinate the correct resources among federal agencies and the Native population. Her latest action involves working with 27 appointed commission members to “hold hearings, take testimony and gather evidence to help come up with recommendations for the government to combat violent crimes against Indigenous peoples,” according to Huffpost. But, while Haaland and her investigative unit get started, there’s so much we can do to raise awareness and potentially stop other ongoing issues as well. MMIW is a result of many other problems plaguing Indian country right now, such as land sovereignty and an overall lack of respect for Natives and our culture. Signing petitions, donating, protesting alongside Natives, and even asking questions regarding Indigenous issues goes a long way. Activists such as @repdavids, @lilnativeboy, @winonaladuke, and @calinalawrence are active on multiple social media platforms and share important infographics, donation links, and petitions.

Native women across the country are murdered 10 times the national average, so we continue to fight for our missing sisters and children in an attempt to raise awareness. We fight because one day it could be our mothers, sisters, cousins, or even ourselves. We wish for a future where Native women do not have to live in fear and our sisters get the justice they deserve.