The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis refers to the disproportionately high rates of violence, disappearance, and murder experienced by Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people across North America, particularly in the United States and Canada.
The crisis compounds due to the lack of consistent and comprehensive data collected by both countries. The National Crime Information Center reported in 2016 that there were 5,712 cases of missing American Indian and Native Alaskan women and girls; however, the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database only had records of 116 cases. Data collection remains difficult because of poor record-keeping, underreporting, racial misclassification, and bias in media coverage. Those reasons combined create an inaccurate picture because the reports (or lack thereof) minimize the extent to which Indigenous women and girls experience violence. The inadequate data collection led to further distrust between Indigenous communities and authorities. In 2017, the Urban Indian Health Institute released a study that aimed to assess Missing and Murdered American Indian and Native Alaskan women and girls across United States cities.
MMIWG brings awareness to the disproportionate violence Indigenous women face. In the U.S., Indigenous women are murdered at a rate more than 10 times the national average in some regions. This crisis is deeply rooted in systemic racism, colonization, forced assimilation, jurisdictional gaps between federal, state/provincial, and tribal authorities, and the loss of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural identity. Grassroots movements, such as MMIWG, are essential to demanding justice and raising awareness for Indigenous communities. These movements highlight important messages, such as “Stop the Violence: No More Stolen Sisters”.
There is also a recent call for this movement to be more gender and people neutral inclusive to recognize that this crisis also affects men, boys, infants, and the elderly. Eighty-two percent of men experience violence in their lifetime and Native children are more likely to experience trauma over their non-Native peers.
Governments in Canada and the U.S. are making strides toward better actions and are acknowledging the crisis. Both Canada and the U.S. recognize May 5th as the official MMIW Day. Every year, individuals are encouraged to wear red and attend marches to raise awareness and fight against the injustices. In 2019, Canada labeled MMIWG as genocide and released a National Inquiry to investigate more thoroughly. The U.S. launched the initiative Operation Lady Justice in 2019 and passed legislation like Savanna’s Act in 2020, but more intentional action and resources are still needed to stop the violence.
Please take time to look at the carefully curated list of resources on this guide and learn more about the MMIWG crisis. Be an advocate and support our Indigenous communities.
Note. From MMIWG2S [photograph], by Brianna Wentz, 2021, Teen Talk (https://teentalk.ca/2021/09/28/mmiwg2s-2/).
Ancient Light: Poems
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Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost
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How We Go Home
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Indigenous Nationhood: Empowering Grassroots Citizens
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In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful
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Keetsahnak / Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters
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In Keetsahnak / Our Murdered and Missing Indigenous Sisters, the tension between personal, political, and public action is brought home starkly as the contributors look at the roots of violence and how it diminishes life for all. Together, they create a model for anti-violence work from an Indigenous perspective. They acknowledge the destruction wrought by colonial violence, and also look at controversial topics such as lateral violence, challenges in working with "tradition," and problematic notions involved in "helping." Through stories of resilience, resistance, and activism, the editors give voice to powerful personal testimony and allow for the creation of knowledge. It's in all of our best interests to take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of Indigenous nation building, and as the backbone of any Indigenous mobilization. --Leanne Betasamosake SimpsonContributors: Kim Anderson, Stella August, Tracy Bear, Christi Belcourt, Robyn Bourgeois, Rita Bouvier, Maria Campbell, Maya Ode'amik Chacaby, Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group, Susan Gingell, Michelle Good, Laura Harjo, Sarah Hunt, Robert Alexander Innes, Beverly Jacobs, Tanya Kappo, Tara Kappo, Lyla Kinoshameg, Helen Knott, Sandra Lamouche, Jo-Anne Lawless, Debra Leo, Kelsey T. Leonard, Ann-Marie Livingston, Brenda Macdougall, Sylvia Maracle, Jenell Navarro, Darlene R. Okemaysim-Sicotte, Pahan Pte San Win, Ramona Reece, Kimberly Robertson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Beatrice Starr, Madeleine Kétéskwew Dion Stout, Waaseyaa'sin Christine Sy, Alex Wilson
Making Space for Indigenous Feminism
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The first edition of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism proposed that Indigenous feminism was a valid and indeed essential theoretical and activist position, and introduced a roster of important Indigenous feminist contributors. This new edition builds on the success and research of the first and provides updated and new chapters that cover a wide range of some of the most important issues facing Indigenous peoples today: violence against women, recovery of Indigenous self-determination, racism, misogyny and decolonization. Specifically, new chapters deal with Indigenous resurgence, feminism amongst the Sami and in Aboriginal Australia, neoliberal restructuring in Oaxaca, Canada's settler racism and sexism, and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. Written by Indigenous feminists and allies, this book provides a powerful and original intellectual and political contribution demonstrating that feminism has much to offer Indigenous women, and all Indigenous peoples, in their struggles against oppression.
My Privilege, My Responsibility: A Memoir
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Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising
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Rematriating Justice: Honouring the Lives of Our Sisters in Spirit
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Violence Against Indigenous Women: Literature, Activism, Resistance
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Violence against Indigenous women in Canada is an ongoing crisis, with roots deep in the nation's colonial history. Despite numerous policies and programs developed to address the issue, Indigenous women continue to be targeted for violence at disproportionate rates. What insights can literature contribute where dominant anti-violence initiatives have failed? Centring the voices of contemporary Indigenous women writers, this book argues for the important role that literature and storytelling can play in response to gendered colonial violence. Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action. With the advent of provincial and national inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a larger public conversation is now underway. Indigenous women's literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique. Violence Against Indigenous Women provides a foundation for reading this literature in the context of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism and the ongoing intellectual history of Indigenous women's resistance.
A Syracuse University librarian curated a list of peer-reviewed research articles that you may be interested in checking out. The articles compiled are only a sample of the important research that is out there about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis. If you would like to find more, please visit Libraries Search and you may use keywords like, "Indigenous women," "murdered," "missing," or you may try any keywords that you think could work better.
These articles are not presented in any citation format, but in list form for ease of reading.
Haudenosaunee Flag
Syracuse University Libraries acknowledges, with respect, the Onondaga Nation, Firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, the Indigenous people on whose ancestral lands Syracuse University now stands.
Syracuse University has multiple resources on campus for Native students, or anyone who may be interested in respectfully learning more information about Indigenous culture or wanting to participate in events as allies.
Art, architecture, and archaeology images including images from the Smithsonian, the MoMA collection for architecture and design and the Schlesinger photograph collection on the history of women in America.
Log in to enable all features.Digitized print volumes, some of which are public domain. Includes almost half the print holdings at SU Libraries, with full-text searching across the entire repository, full-text PDF downloads for items in public domain or not otherwise under copyright, and full-text access to brittle out-of-print items in SU Libraries.
Art, correspondence, diaries, business documents, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, photographs, printed books, treaties, and tribe records documenting early contacts between European settlers and American Indians, 1500-1998. Content digitized from the Edward E. Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library. Subjects covered include political, social, and cultural effects of early encounters; the turbulence of the Civil War; on-going repercussions of government legislation; and the civil rights movement.
Collection of print journalism from Indigenous peoples of the US and Canada from 1828-2016. From the collections at the Newberry Library, Chicago, and the Sequoyah National Research Centre at the University of Arkansas. Key topics covered include community news, public health and welfare, education, tribal laws and elections, sovereignty, and more.
