Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Art installation inspired by The REDress Project (Vancouver, Canada, National Day for Vigils for MMIW, 2016)
Abbreviation	MMIW
Formation	Canada and United States
Purpose	Movement to increase awareness of disproportionate violence experienced by Indigenous Canadian and Native American women
Products	2011 Statistics Canada report 2014 and 2015 RCMP reports on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (June 2019) Missing & Murdered: The Unsolved Cases of Indigenous Women and Girls (CBC investigative report) REDress Project
Affiliations	Native Women's Association of Canada Assembly of First Nations RCMP Drag the Red Walking With Our Sisters Sisters in spirit National Coalition for our Stolen Sisters

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)^[a] also known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and more broadly as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) or Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) is a human rights crisis of violence against Indigenous women in Canada and the United States,^[1][2]notably those in the FNIM (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) and Native American communities,^[3][4][5] but also amongst other Indigenous peoples such as in Australia and New Zealand,^[2] and the grassroots movement to raise awareness of MMIW through organizing marches; building databases of the missing; holding local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and conducting domestic violence trainings and other informational sessions for police.^[6]

Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities in both the US and Canada have fought to bring awareness to the connection between sex trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the women who go missing and are murdered.^[7][8][9] From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for Indigenous women in Canada was almost six times as high as the homicide rate for other women.^[10]: 22 In Nunavut, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, this over-representation of Indigenous women among homicide victims was even higher.^[10]: 22 In the US, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic; one in three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67% of these assaults involve non-Indigenous perpetrators.^{[11][12][13][14][15][b]}

MMIW has been described as a Canadian national crisis^[17][18][19] and a Canadian genocide.^[20][21] In response to repeated calls from Indigenous groups, activists, and non-governmental organizations, the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016.^[22][23] According to the inquiry's backgrounder, "Indigenous women and girls in Canada are disproportionately affected by all forms of violence. Although Indigenous women make up 4 per cent of Canada's female population, 16 per cent of all women murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012 were Indigenous."^[24] The inquiry was completed and presented to the public on June 3, 2019.^[22] Notable MMIW cases in Canada include 19 women killed in the Highway of Tears murders, and some of the 49 women from the Vancouver area murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton.^[25]

In the US, the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized in 2013, which for the first time gave tribes jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute felony domestic violence offenses involving both Native American offenders as well as non-Native offenders on reservations.^[26][c] In 2019, the House of Representatives, led by the Democratic Party, passed H.R. 1585 (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) by a vote of 263–158, which increases tribes' prosecution rights much further. The bill was not taken up by the Senate, which at the time had a Republican majority.^[28]

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