SAY HER NAME: A REMEMBRANCE OF THE MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN AND AROUND THE EMERALD TRIANGLE
May 5th has been established as a day to bring awareness to a well-known reality of Indian Country its daughters face higher rates of violence, rape, and murder than most Americans. The movement known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) was founded and shaped by native women hoping to shed light on these stark realities and bring healing to their people.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs offers data that quantifies these injustices. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice determined four of five Native women (84.3%) have been victims of violence in their lives. 56.1% of Native women have experienced sexual violence. A Center for Disease Control and Prevention study determined that murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women.
Despite the need to focus efforts on this population, databases relied upon to catalog missing people and cold cases prove unreliable. Analysis by the National Crime Information Center in 2016 found there were 5,712 reports of missing Native women in the US Department of Justices federal missing person database. But, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) had only 116 of those cases logged.
long article with details of specific NA women from the north coast counties California:
https://kymkemp.com/2022/05/05/say-her-name-a-remembrance-of-the-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-in-and-around-the-emerald-triangle/