Our Community’s Awareness of #MMIW
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By: Catherine Garmong, Erin Shinners, and Grace Barkhuff
We surveyed a small sample of students at Georgia Tech, and found that after just spending a few minutes learning about modern-day violence against Indigenous people in the United States, perceptions shifted dramatically towards seeing this violence as a problem that needs addressing.
A Note
This post discusses sensitive topics, including abuse and sexual violence. If you or a loved one struggles with these topics, there are resources available to help you.
StrongHearts Native Helpline: https://strongheartshelpline.org
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): https://www.nami.org/help or call 800–950-NAMI
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1–800–656–4673
Intro
Today in the United States (US), Indigenous women face unprecedented levels of violence. As of 2016, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that 83% of Indigenous women report experiencing violence in their lifetime, with 56% of women reporting they have experienced sexual violence and 49% reporting they have experienced stalking. Data also shows that of the 2/5 of Indigenous women who have faced abuse, 38% could not get medical or legal help they wanted (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.).
The US government has made some progress in decreasing injustices against Indigenous women. In recent years, the DOJ and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have pushed to increase data collection about crimes committed on Indigenous lands; however, this initiative failed to look at statistics about domestic violence (Cultural Survival, 2020). According to Indigenous rights advocacy group Cultural Survival, the social media hashtag #MMIW, for “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women,” can generate several hundred thousand impressions every 4 hours. However, the hashtag has not yet reached mainstream awareness they way others like #BLM for “Black Lives Matter” has (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2019).
In 2013, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) gave tribes jurisdiction to prosecute non-Indigenous perpetrators in tribal courts on the legislative front. However, this act was not reauthorized in 2019 when senate Republicans took issue with closing the “boyfriend loophole” which prevents those accused of assault or stalking from purchasing firearms (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2019). There is still so much left to be done to reduce the violence toward Indigenous women.
Despite the clear and present problem, all three authors were largely unfamiliar with the statistics and sheer magnitude of the problem prior to a course reading in Spring 2021. We wanted to know if this lack of awareness was present at large in our community at Georgia Tech.
Positionality
All three authors identify as white women raised in the Eastern United States. No one on the team self-identifies as a member of an Indigenous community in the United States or elsewhere and feels it is important to disclose that information given the research and recommendations outlined in this post. We are constantly learning and are open to discussion.
We acknowledge that Georgia Tech is located on land traditional territory of the Muscogee (Creek).
Our Survey
Methods
We created a survey in Qualtrics with a focus on violence facing modern-day Indigenous people in the United States. The questions we asked helped us to understand the Georgia Tech community’s existing knowledge on the topic. We started our questions by including the statement “Modern-day violence against Native Americans is a problem in the United States,” and asked people to answer to what extent they agreed with that statement from strongly disagree to strongly agree. This was followed with a series of similarly formulated statements to help gauge people’s knowledge on the topic.
Then our questions transitioned to focusing on comparing the awareness of #MMIW to #BLM. In drawing this comparison, we thought it could be helpful for our group to make conclusions on how to create awareness for this issue.
After this, we asked questions that involved participants estimating certain statistics related to violence against Indigenous communities in the United States. Once people guessed this data, we provided them with the correct responses on the next page.
We followed this with the same question we started with (To what extent do you agree that modern-day violence against Native Americans is a problem in the United States). By finishing this way, we were able to see if gaining awareness of violence towards Indigenous communities impacted the way in which people viewed these issues.
The last part of the survey was gathering demographics about the people we surveyed, so we can better understand the group represented in our results.
Participants
Forty-five members of the Georgia Tech community responded to our survey. This included 30 grad students, 11 undergrads, 3 alum, and 1 faculty member. A majority (84%) attended high school in the United States, and a majority of those (73% of the 84%) attended high school in Georgia. Thirty (67%) respondents were women, 12 men (27%), 1 nonbinary, and 2 preferred not to disclose. Our respondents skewed toward those who self-describe themselves as “staying up to date with social justice movements in the United States,” with 83% stating they either agree or strongly agree that they stay up to date.
Results
The most striking result was the difference between how respondents felt about the issue of modern day violence facing the Indigenous population before and after our survey.
At the beginning of the survey, responses followed a skewed distribution toward strongly agreeing that modern day violence against Indigenous people is an issue, with 18% of respondents neutral or disagreeing that it is an issue.
After the survey, where we had participants reflect about the issues and provided statistics on the issue, the responses to the same question were dramatically different. Only 2 respondents were either neutral or disagreed, and every other participant strongly agreed that the violence is an issue.
This shows that after just spending a few minutes reading about the issue, perceptions of the problem shifted dramatically towards seeing this violence as a problem. This tells us that knowledge and awareness of the problem is severely lacking in the Georgia Tech community, as it likely is across the United States.
Another result that was notable was the comparison of the awareness of the #BLM hashtag and the #MMIW hashtag. We asked respondents to write the meaning of the acronyms if they knew it. All (100%) respondents knew what BLM stands for, however only 9 respondents (20%) knew what MMIW stands for. Of the 9 who knew, only 7 (16%) were able to state the acronym fully (we counted participants as knowing if they could state either the term murdered or missing and the term Indigenous).
It is important to note that this survey took place in the context of the Covid-era civil rights movement, while Dereck Chauvin stood trial for George Floyd’s murder. We would be truly disappointed if 100% of respondents didn’t know that #BLM stands for. Still, the lack of awareness of what #MMIW stands for in the social-media era shows that the hashtag is not spreading the way it needs to in order to gain the attention of the mainstream media and US public.
Recommendations
Based on our findings, we believe the key to solving the issues resides in awareness. This is clearly a problem within the Georgia Tech community. Although it is a small sample size, we hypothesize that this trend would apply to the greater Georgia Tech community and the general public.
Case Study: Save Our Sisters
At the University of Washington, the Intellectual House, dedicated to Native student success, planned an Indigenous Student series which elevated the voices of Indigenous women (Brollini, 2017; Real Change, 2018). Growing Thunder was one of the women that spoke at the event. Growing Thunder lost her aunt to violence and in light of hearing about the MMIW movement created a project called “Save Our Sisters.” In this project, Growing Thunder sews ribbon dresses and skirts to honor the missing women in both the US and Canada. Her goals are to develop this project into a nonprofit that supports the families of victims. Unfortunately, there are families that cannot pay for a funeral or to retrieve the body of their loved one. The efforts of Growing Thunder are necessary because almost all Native families are affected by MMIW in some way. Although the work of Native people on this issue plays a vital role in raising awareness, it should not be the only contribution. Generally, the majority of awareness for MMIW comes from within Native American communities. Creating social change is a matter of policy work, victim advocacy, and legislation, all of which has gone under-supported by non-Native institutions and people. The question is how to grow awareness within the general public while continuing to uplift and amplify existing native voices.
How could #MMIW raise awareness like #BLM?
It is important to note that the Black Lives Matter movement and the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women movement are different in their aims and goals. Regardless, both are vitally important and should have the support they need to achieve their communities’ needs. With that being said, the progress within the Black Lives Matter movement could be helpful to understanding how similar progress could be made within the MMIW movement. The awareness needs to move beyond the Native community and creating this awareness can come from social media (and other forms of media). Here are some of the impacts that social media has on the Black Lives Matter movement, quoted from MediaKix:
The movement was able to spread awareness to corporations that created commercials, anti-racism initiatives, and social media posts for Black Lives Matter. Although some of these actions may not create tangible outcomes in the movement, they definitely create awareness. The same energy and development should be seen in MMIW.
One company, Levi’s, has started promoting awareness for the movement through a video inspired by Rosalie Fish’s campaign (Levis, 2020). Fish was a high school track runner that decided to act on the impact she had seen on her community. At each of her races she painted a red hand over her mouth and wore red shoe laces to symbolize the MMIW movement. If more companies followed in Levi’s footsteps, support and awareness for this movement could grow.
The Black Lives Matter movement is a testimony to the impact of social media and creates hope that #MMIW can develop similar outcomes as awareness is raised.
Collecting Data
A vital step in raising awareness is ensuring that accurate data is being collected. According to a study by Urban Indian Health institute only 116 of 5,712 cases of murdered or missing Native women were logged in the Department of Justices’ nationwide database (“Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls...”, 2018). The underreporting of the violence happening in Native communities is contributing to the lack of awareness in how bad the problem is. The murders and disappearances of women and girls within the community needs to be accurately represented in a way that both addresses biases within the data system and honors the lives of Native women. The first thing that could be done is engage and hire indigenous experts. This recommendation comes from Indigenous researchers, who are both data experts and advocates. Native women like Annita Lucchesi and Abigail Echo-Hawk are investing their work into data collection. Together their data collection and academic research has helped bring more knowledge into Indigenous epidemiology and gender studies. This can be seen in their Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report.
Another important aspect in data collection is ensuring that it is accurately showing data on race. Researchers identified that there was significant racial misclassification in police data. There needs to be systems built without these biases. The main point is to decolonize the data. Since Western methodologies were used to marginalize Native communities in the first place, a different approach should be used. As Annita Lucchesi states in an article from Data-Smart City Solutions, “For Indigenous people, our knowledge systems are all about relationships, relationship building, and mobilizing the information that we gather to care for our people” (Gardner, 2020). Overall, since the data that has been collected on Indigenous communities isn’t accurate, data-driven decisions to help the community cannot be made.
Education Reform
Another important point in raising awareness for Indigineous communities is to refocus the lens of how we view Native Americans through the education system. The public school system does not do a sufficient job of providing a holistic view of what it means to be a native person in the United States.
As part of our survey, we asked respondents if they felt that their pre-college education taught them about modern-day violence facing Indigenous peoples. A majority, 80%, disagreed or strongly disagreed that it did.
We often focus on topics that provide a very one-sided (colonizer) view of history. As younger students we learned about Christopher Columbus and how he discovered America. We learned about the Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving feast that represents “eternal” peace between Native people and those that colonized America. We learned of the horrors of the Trail of Tears but nothing that followed it. We think that if education focused on these histories from the perspective of Native communities, people would feel more strongly about the state of Indigenous communities today.
Student activism in all of this is a powerful tool. According to research done by Devon Issac and Amanda Young, Native students should be given tools from professionals to help eliminate the disparities of violence toward Native American women (Isaacs, 2019). Indigenous students deserve a space within their schools to be advocates if they chose to be. Students should feel empowered to research and pursue projects that address MMIW, to develop interest in advocacy work, and engage in scholarly writing about MMIW. More resources in schools should be given to increase the opportunity to connect with conferences where students can speak or listen to issues relating to MMIW. They should also be given grant funding and other forms of financial support to encourage research, professionals, community members, and organizations committed to MMIW work. Finally, students should feel supported to establish community forums or other talking circles where survivorship and resilience is discussed.
Supporting Indigenous Policies and Programs
The final recommendation is to support policies and programs that help Indigenous communities. It’s important to raise support around VAWA and any other policies that call to reform existing institutions that harm Indigenous communities. Another important aspect to this is establishing MMIWG protocol. In rural and urban areas there is a lot of confusion over jurisdiction of authority. There have been many cases in which the tribal, local, and state law enforcements struggle with knowing how to approach the case of a missing woman. This causes a lot of difficulty for the families of victims. Bouncing back and forth between authorities increases the chance data won’t be collected properly. The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center has formulated a toolkit that helps tribes that are responding to disappearances that addresses issues of cross-jurisdiction (“Tribal Community Response...”, n.d.).
Call to Action
There is a lot of progress that needs to be made to solve the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Creating change for this movement starts from within. If you are not a member of the Indigenous community, we encourage you to research more into this topic, listen to Native voices, and talk to other people within your community. Awareness is the first step in driving the larger scale changes needed in policies and institutions.
We have compiled a few projects from Indigenous voices to begin exploring the problem of modern-day violence against Indigenous women:
1: Not Invisible: A Seattle Times Docuseries
Bibliography
“Addressing the Epidemic of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” Cultural Survival, March 6, 2020. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/addressing-epidemic-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls.
“Black Lives Matter Social Media: Statistics, Impact & Beyond.” Mediakix, June 29, 2020. https://mediakix.com/blog/black-lives-matter-social-media/.
Brollini, Lyndsey. “Native Women Use Innovative Methods to Raise Awareness of Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women.” December 13, 2017 | Real Change. Real Change, January 5, 2018. https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2017/12/13/native-women-use-innovative-methods-raise-awareness-missing-murdered-indigenous-women.
“Five Things About Violence Against American Indian and Alaskan Native Women and Men.” U.S. Department of Justice, n.d. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249815.pdf
Gardner, Betsy. “They Disappear ‘Not Once, but Three Times: In Life, In the Media, and In the Data.’” Data-Smart City Solutions. Harvard Kennedy School, February 27, 2020. https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/they-disappear-not-once-three-times-life-media-and-data.
Isaacs, Devon S. “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW): Bringing Awareness through the Power of Student Activism.” Journal of Indigenous Research, October 2019. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=kicjir.
Levi’s®. “Rosalie Fish Runs to Bring Awareness to Indigenous Women Who Have Been Silenced through Violence. .” Twitter. Levi’s, April 28, 2020. https://twitter.com/levis/status/1255279312451899394.
“Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A Snapshot of Data from 71 Urban Cities in the United States.” Urban Indian Health Institute, n.d. https://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls-Report.pdf.
“MMIW Crisis.” U.S. Department of the Interior. Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, September 13, 2019. https://www.doi.gov/ocl/mmiw-crisis.
“Tribal Community Response When a Woman Is Missing: A Toolkit for Action.” National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, n.d. https://www.niwrc.org/sites/default/files/files/reports/Toolkit_MissingAndMurdered.pdf.
