May 5th marks the National Awareness Day for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a humanitarian crisis that affects Indigenous people across the globe. Although Native communities, and native women in particular, have suffered violence for centuries; the current struggle against violence only garnered national attention in the past couple decades.
The efforts by Indigenous communities have sparked a greater awareness of the crisis and pushed governments to provide more resources to solve it. Although the Federal government has begun to help solve the MMIW crisis, there is still work to be done to end the violence in Native communities. As we honor the lives of our Native kin and celebrate the resilience of the current movement to end the crisis; we invite you to think deeply about these issues and pray for all Natives affected by this violence.
MMIW Activism
We owe a lot to the work of MMIW activists, especially the women that have been at the frontlines of the effort to end violence against Native women and girls. Indigenous communities and activists have spearheaded the MMIW movement though campaigning, protesting, and lobbying efforts at various levels of government. In Canada, indigenous communities, women’s associations and other grass roots organizations brought widespread attention to the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women calling for a response to the overt violence against these groups. The #MMIW, started by indigenous activist and journalist Shiela North Wilson in 2012, was used to spread the message on social media garnering even more attention to the issue.
Data on Missing and Murdered Native Americans
These statistics come from federal reporting system like the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting, National Crime Information Center, National Missing and Unidentified Person Systems, and other national surveys or research projects. Even with these systems, there are issues of reporting that make it difficult to assess the true amount of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The Federal government’s response to the crisis involves updating their reporting policies and systems to gain better, more accessible data.
Violent Crime Victimization and Homicides
Most of the national violent crime statistics come from federal databases. The FBI tracks crime data through the Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR) and in 2021 they began using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) which gives detailed information about violent crime incidents. Other federal sources that track violent crime excluding homicides are surveys of victims like the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS). These sources survey victims of crimes and recently increased their sampling of Native American victims.
Missing Persons
Federal sources for missing persons include: National Crime Information Center (NCIC), National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). There are other national databases such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 2018 the United Indian Health Institute (UIHI) released a research study on Missing and Murdered Women and Girls in urban cities across America.
These statistics on missing and murdered cases do not completely describe the actual amount of violence against Native women due to low victim reporting, inconsistent law enforcement reporting, flawed data keeping systems, and the misidentification of Native persons in certain cases.
Footnotes
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime Data Explorer
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Systems, Violence American Indian or Alaska Native Females, 2021-2023
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/special-reports - DOJ Rosay, Dr. André B. Rosay and NIJ, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men,” May 2016
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249736.pdf - NCIC 2022 Missing Persons
- National Institute of Justice. National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Unresolved Missing Persons Cases Published in NamUs Bi-Annual Report January 2025
- Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A Snapshot of Data from 71 Cities in the United States, November 2018
http://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls-Report.pdf