National Day of Awareness for MMIWR
(Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives)
The week of April 29th to May 5th National Week of action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives. April 5th is recognized as the National Day of Awareness for MMIWR. This date was chosen in honor of 21-year-old Hanna Harris (Northern Cheyenne), who went missing and was found murdered on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 2013. May 5th was her birthday—a day that should have been a celebration of her life, but instead became a rallying call for justice for all of the indigenouse woman who have gone missing. Some have been found, some murdered many remain missing. More disappear each year.
The custom of wearing red, hanging a red dress on a door or fence to raise public awareness during this time has been steadily growing.
The National Crime Information Center reports that, in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. At the same time the US Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database, (NamUs), only logged 116 cases. No research has been done on rates of such violence among American Indian and Alaska Native women living in urban areas despite the fact that approximately 71% of American Indian and Alaska Natives live in urban areas. The scope of this epidemic of abduction and murder is only slowly coming to light.
National Day of Awareness for MMIWR started in 2013. It is a movement to bring awareness to this ongoing assault on our sisters. This month take some time to learn more about the efforts of our indigenous neighbors, our politicians and other organizations to stop this abuse. Some links are:
Urban Indian Health Institute
https://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls-Report.pdf
National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Inc. (NIWRC)
https://www.niwrc.org/mmiwr-awareness
Wikipedia
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women