Honoring Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women

Dear Campus Community,

This week, we observe the National Day of Awareness for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). For centuries, Indigenous communities have been subject to violence, removal from their ancestral lands, disease, and forced assimilation rooted in the ugly legacies of racism and colonialism. Today, Indigenous women are disproportionally at risk of experiencing violence and are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women from any other race or ethnic group. The problem is especially concerning in our own community, with Washington state experiencing the second highest rate of murders of Indigenous women.

Since 2017, this day of awareness has aimed to raise the profile of the epidemic of deadly violence facing women from Indigenous communities and provide access to resources and support. I encourage you to join us in honoring the memory of those women and girls who have been taken from their families and communities, to learn about the history of violence as a tool of oppression against Native peoples, and to commit ourselves to work for justice and violence prevention.

This MMIW Awareness Day I encourage you to show your support for our Indigenous neighbors and stand in solidarity against hate and oppression in all its forms. The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center has an extensive list of ways to take action as well as resources for further learning. If you want to learn more, here is a list of additional resources, including many books, films, and articles to available through Collins Memorial Library:

Websites

• Our Bodies, Our Stories
• The Puyallup Tribe of Indians Community Domestic Violence Advocacy Program (CDVAP)
• Data for Indigenous Justice
• Office for Victims of Crime Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance

Books:

• Keetsahnak/ Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters
• Violence against Indigenous women: literature, activism, resistance
• Highway of Tears: a true story of racism, indifference, and the pursuit of justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
• If I Go Missing
• #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women
• Forever Loved : Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada
• Indigenous women and violence : Feminist activist research in heightened states of injustice
• Sharing our stories of survival : Native women surviving violence

Films

• Sisters Rising
• Canada’s Lost Girls

Articles

• Resisting the settler gaze: California indigenous feminisms
• Folks Don’t Understand What It’s Like to Be a Native Woman: Framing Trauma via #MMIW
• Fighting for our sisters: Community advocacy and action for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
• Verbs that will story our bodies into something more than missing: Poetry, presencing, and #MMIWG2S

Sincerely,

Lorna Hernandez-Jarvis | Vice President for Institutional Equity & Diversity