I’ve been watching “Alaska Daily” on ABC with Hillary Swank. It’s very well written and the acting is really good too, but none of that is why you should watch it if you’re not already. Despite the fictional aspect, this show is telling the very real truth about the MMIW movement. MMIW stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Like many people I was aware on some level that violence against indigenous women was a real problem, but it was abstract and lumped in with the violence against all black and brown women.
Through this show I have learned that Indigenous women have the highest rates of violence, sexual violence, going missing and being murdered than any other demographic in the United States.
The most recent show I watched last night showed a map of Alaska and then they started loading the faces of the women who had gone missing or been murdered at their last known location. They started with just the past week, then two weeks, then a month, and so on. By the time they reached a year the tears started welling up ad by the time they hit 10 years I was actively sobbing. (Even as I write this just now I am weepy.) Thousands of women missing or murdered just in Alaska. It didn’t even count any domestic violence or sexual assaults either, unless of course it ended in death.
According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs 84.3 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56.1 percent who have experienced sexual violence.
And these are the reported cases. Meaning there are even more occurrences. Those numbers are so large as to be nearly incomprehensible. Like when we started seeing the covid deaths rolling in that moved into the millions. The sheer numbers make it almost seem unreal.
This then is the value of this show. They are telling one woman’s story specifically while sharing the horrifying statistics. It makes it feel real. It allows you to be angry at the cover ups, collusion, corruption, incompetence, and just plain indifference.
There are ways you can help. Become aware. Share their stories. Donate your money. Here are some websites to get you started:
Baby Gay When You're Fat and Gray 
#MMIWG is a real problem that pretty much no one knows about because they aren’t white blonde girls. A white blonde girl goes missing and the entire country heard all about it and the search efforts and the PA from the parents to being their daughter home. An indigenous woman goes missing and there’s zero coverage. No one bats an eye.
It’s actually the perfect crime because the rez police don’t have the funds to look properly and local, state, and federal police say “that’s not our jurisdiction”.
There was a case in Canada only a couple months ago where 2 indigenous women went missing. The last known location for one of their phones was a trash dump and local authorities REFUSED to let the rez police investigate in the dump for weeks. When they were found the bodies had all ready decomposed leaving no evidence.
I’ll have to send you a photo from a photo shoot I planned to bring attention to this problem. This won’t let me post it here
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