Recently, President Biden ordered the Federal Government to tackle the “epidemic” of missing or murdered indigenous people. Many of you are now familiar with this “epidemic” but not so much before the Gabbie Pettito tragedy.
I happened to be following the “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Woman (MMIW)” social crisis for a little over a year. I will tell you how I learned about this on another day, but for now, in my first blog post about MMIW, I wanted to share what I believe is the most important reason why this is happening and continues.
Last September I was listening to a webinar, “Virtual Conversations with the FIeld; Developing Advocacy Responses to MMIW ” that The National Indigenous Women’s Recourse Center had hosted. This organization had been presenting many meaningful webinars to educate people both in and out of Indigenous communities. During the Q&A session, one of the participants had said that we need to oppose the Oil Pipeline because many of the MMIW occurred in and around the Oil Pipeline construction area. I was curious, and did more research based on this “accusation”. And I reached these articles.
“Why Aren’t Fossil Fuel Companies Held Accountable For Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women ?” (Yesmagazine.org) https://www.
“Shelter Reports Assults, Harassment Linked to Line 3 Pipeline Workers” https://www.
“Zuya Wynyan Wicayuonihan Honoring Warrior Women; A study on missing & murdered Indigenous women and girls in States impacted by the Keystone XL Pipeline” (Sovereign Bodies Institute & Brave Heart Society) https://2a840442-f49a-45b0-b1a1-7531a7cd3d30.filesusr.com/ugd/6b33f7_27835308ecc84e5aae8ffbdb7f20403c.pdf
Have you seen the movie Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner?
(warning, spoiler alert!) A young indigenous woman was found dead. She was at her boyfriend’s trailer, located at a smaller man camp along an oil drilling site when she was sexually assulted by her boyfriend’s coworkers. This horrific scene tells you how these men work as security guards at a nearby oil-drilling site in Wyoming get so lonely and sexually frustrated, in the remote wilderness with no family, friends, or entertainment.
This assumption, WWMI is related to the proximity of “man camps”, makes sense to me.
Next, I will talk more about why many of the cases are unsolved. This is the area why I decided to start this blog, I want to spread the awareness of what we, you, and I can do to help stop MMIW. Yes, It is a great victory that President Biden ordered the Federal Government to tackle the issue. But we can do more to help. I will share my discoveries in my future blogs.
Thank you for reading.
Until next time.