Where Are Our Girls? An examination of the MMIW Crisis in the U.S. and Canada

Where are Our Girls? 

Examining the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the U.S. and Canada.

Introduction

By enforcing a set of hegemonic norms, society has created a system in which there is a unique experience of violence, oppression, and erasure of indigenous women. This system is not unique to the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women in contemporary times, but rather a continuation to the systems of violence established during colonial times. This violence is then reinforced by cultural imperialism. A specific example of a form of cultural imperialism would be the verbage used in the diaries of the colonizers. Some colonizers even detailing brutal rapes and torture of Native women. The significance of the history of violence being how it has been sustained throughout the generations. As well as a system that continuously brutalizes and erases the experiences of Native women. In contemporary times we see very seldom resources being afforded to address the issue of murdered and missing indigenous women. The lack of accurate and reliable data on an institutional level generates tolerance and acceptance of violence against Native American women through cultural imperialism, therefore reinforcing this violence.

By using critical thinking strategies of Iris Marion Young we can properly unpack the continuous acts of oppression and violence faced by Native women. As well as using the criteria she uses to describe her main theory “the politics of difference” to analyze how the system persisted despite societal changes. 

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Young’s 5 Faces of Oppression

As an oppressed group, Native Americans have historically been dehumanized and devalued in social, institutional, and systemic contexts through social structure and laws. This condition is worsened for indigenous women who have the intersecting marginalized identities of being both woman and indigenous. As a result of this marginalization and oppression, Native women are plagued with a unique injustice of suffering. In many parts of North America, specifically the United States and Canada, indigenous women are disproportionately targeted in acts of violence, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, kidnapping, and homicide. According to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls  (NIMMIWG), only 4% of the female population in Canada is made up of indigenous women, but indigenous women make up over 24% of Canadian homicide victims (2017, p. 7). In the United States, Native women make up less than 2% of the national population, but account for over 5% of our missing persons (Brewer, 2018). Furthermore, Native women are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than non-Native women. In Canada, indigenous women are twelve times more likely than any woman of another race to be missing or murdered, and sixteen to nineteen times more likely than caucasian women in particular (NIMMIWG, 2017, p. 7-8). This continuation of disproportionate violence against Native women is what Iris Marion Young describes as “a social practice” and the repetition of such violence becomes a “social given that everyone knows happens and will happen again” (Young, 2011, p. 62). Without acknowledgement and acceptance of the issue through accurate record keeping and without responses to these records and statistics, this issue will remain unceasing. 

The issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls presents a very prominent crisis of injustice. The injustice is magnified by multiple factors, one of them being that the real number of murdered and missing indigenous women is unknown due to errors in record keeping and lack of identification for victims and cases. While it is hard to pinpoint the exact number, it is estimated that the real figures are much higher than recorded (NIMMIWG, 2017, p. 7). In relation, Young states that the acts of violence itself are not a face of oppression, but the “social context surrounding them, which makes them possible or even acceptable” are (Young, 2011, p. 61). The lack of precise data creates an invisibility of the problem, therefore allowing this violence to be possible and continue to occur without further accountability and recognition. This invisibility stems from the cultural imperialism that renders Native American’s “perspective of [their] own group invisible”  as the rest of society chooses to ignore the oppression (Young, 2011, p 59). Also as a result of this limited data, the injustice of missing and murdered indigenous women is too often brushed off, dismissed, and ignored. Many women have been erased from the narrative, only to be remembered by their loved ones, who still search for answers, share their stories, and fight for justice. This remembrance can only fill part of the whole that is made by lack of answers and lack of accountability enforced on an systemic and institutional level.  

The lack of answers and accountability furthers the injustice for indigenous women and can be seen through analysis of the complex politics of court jurisdiction. For instance, tribal courts only have jurisdiction over tribal citizens, except within specific cases, which do not include crimes against children, and sexual assault crimes committed by strangers. Because the majority of people who commit violent crimes against indigenous women are non-Native men, tribal courts lack the ability to try and prosecute the perpetrators of these atrocities (Brewer, 2018). This inability to prosecute the perpetrator reflects Young’s analysis of systemic violence that unveils oppression when the perpetrators “receive light or no punishment” (Young, 2011, p. 62). Perpetrators who are never held responsible for the unjust violence against these women allow “society [to render] their acts acceptable” (Young, 2011, p. 62). This goes to show the institutional nature of this injustice; while the courts are an institution whose responsibility and purpose are to ensure that justice is served (hence the reason it is called a “justice system”), it does not work to adequately serve those who are institutionally oppressed. Because they are an institution of the state, the courts perpetuate and reinforce hegemonic perceptions of justice as universalized rules and norms equally applied to everyone. As Young states, these institutions “condition people’s ability to participate in determining their actions and their ability to develop and exercise their capacities” (2011, p. 22). Young also argues that we often “take for granted such institutions of the modern state” because we are told to trust that the courts will find justice (2011, p. 22). However, this supposed justice is not found for many marginalized groups. We need to look more closely and critically at the oppressive beliefs and actions that are perpetuated by our institutions, many of which stem from a sinister history of forced assimilation and cultural genocide in the case of American Indians. 

Looking at the injustices suffered by indigenous people through a historical context, we can see how the effects of colonization have resulted in the systemic, institutional, and social oppression of Native Americans. The process of colonization of the Americas by Europeans has relied heavily on the displacement of indigenous people for the purpose of social control and cultural, political, and economic domination. A specific example of this—among many—is the Trail of Tears, which forced Native Americans to relocate from their ancestral homelands to government designated territories in order to make room for white settlers. Throughout the history of the Americas, physical displacement of this nature by oppressive colonizers has been justified through the logic of dehumanization of indigenous people. By the hands of cultural imperialism, “Dominant groups project their own experience as the representative of humanity as such,” which excludes Native Americans from representation by the dominant definition of humanity (Young, 2011, p. 59). Cruel and inhumane treatment is deemed acceptable because members of the oppressed group are seen to be subhuman beings, who deviate from the hegemonic norm. The displacement and oppression of Indigenous women is also justified as the response to “the universalization of the dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm” of what it means to be human (Young, 2011, p.59).  As Young discusses through the institutionalization of cultural imperialism, this narrative of denied humanity and disposability also becomes internalized by society, as well as by the oppressed group that has been marked out and defined by the outside (Young, 2011, p. 59). Because of the historical denial of their humanity, Native American people continue to feel the sting of colonial violence. As we discussed previously, due to the intersecting oppressions of both race and gender, these injustices are felt more intensely by indigenous women in particular, as many forms of physical and sexual violence against them continue to be normalized and even accepted within society. Furthermore, when Native women are victims of violence, their experiences, stories, and identities are rendered invisible due to their historical erasure through cultural imperialism. 

       Going further on the topic of cultural imperialism, the harmful stereotypes that often dominate the hegemonic discourse in regards to Native American women tend to portray them as hypersexual, exotically erotic beings. These dominant portrayals of Native American women “Render the particular perspective of [their] own group invisible” and impose the constructed stereotypes upon this group, and mark “it out as the Other” (Young, 2011, p. 58-59). The specific type of oppression where Native American women are “both marked out by stereotypes and at the same time rendered invisible” is referred to by Young as, “a paradoxical oppression” (Young, 2011, p. 59). This is represented by the sexual exploitation through stereotypes that project these women as being sexually exotic objects. While doing so, their humanity is again stripped away, their identities erased and seen as nothing more than—as Marilyn Frye writes—a “sexual service (including provisions for his genital sexual needs)” which makes these women into objects of sex, a costume, or a source of sexual desire rather than an individual (Frye, 1983, p. 379). These stereotypes become internalized and Native American women “are forced to react to behavior of others influenced by those images” (Young, 2011, p 59-60); the reactions influenced by these stereotypes are violence and the systemic acceptance of that violence. This in of itself illustrates the dangers faced by indigenous women in our society; Native American women are disproportionate targets of sexual and physical violence because their bodies are systemically devalued, seen as disposable and subhuman.

Much of the issues discussed in this paper in regards to missing and murdered indigenous women is limited in scope. The actual issue is very multifaceted and difficult to fully address and understand under the criteria of this paper. The deep history of  society erasing and brutalizing the experiences of indigenous women is very much alive and thriving under our systems of oppression.  By using Iris Marion Young’s Politics of Difference, we are able to start to understand how oppression is sustained. Specifically with the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women we have earmarked consciousness raising as a means to addressing the oppression. We can conclude that in order to fully address this issue we need to invest resources in finding out how many women are being impacted by this violence. Violence and oppression are sustained by erasure, therefore heightening the importance of memory and remembrance; we cannot allow these women to be forgotten. The violence suffered by indigenous peoples is not a contemporary problem and must be addressed in a multitude of ways in order to be truly effective.

References

Bailey, Jane, and Sara Shayan. "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis: Technological Dimensions." Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, vol. 28, no. 2, 2016, pp. 321-341, doi:10.3138/cjwl.28.2.321.

Brewer, G.L. “The crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women.” High Country News, 04 May 2018. Retrieved from https://www.hcn.org/articles/indian-country-news-the-crisis-of-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women

"Calendar of Events." Minneapolis American Indian Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2018.

"Community Starts with You." Two Rivers Gallery. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2018.

Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983. Print. 

 

“Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: Recourses and and Information.” Heidi Heitkamp, United States Senator for North Dakota. 

McDiarmid, Margo. “Still no way to tell how many Indigenous women and girls go missing each year in Canada.” CBC News, 21 Dec. 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indigenous-missing- women-police-data-1.4449073. 

National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2017). Interim Report: Our Women and Girls are Sacred. Vancouver, BC: Author.

Northern Affairs Canada. “Background on the Inquiry.” Government of Canada; Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 22 Apr. 2016, www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1449240606362/1449240634871.

"The REDress and Monumental Quilt Projects." Two Rivers Gallery. N.p., 2018. Web. 02 May 2018.

Ponomareff, Justine. "Awaiting Justice: How the Government has Fumbled its National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.(TIMELINE)(Chronology)." This Magazine, vol. 51, no. 3, 2017, pp. 10.

Torrez, Katherine. “Unworthy Bodies: The Exclusion of Indigenous Bodies from Canadian Consciousness.” Carleton University, Carleton University, carleton.ca/iis/wp-content/uploads/Katherine-Torrez.pdf.

Young, Iris Marion, and Danielle S. Allen. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2011. Print.

Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983. Print.