Wind River - In Real Time

by Professor Justine Dunlap

“While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.” 

This startling sentence comes at the end of the movie Wind River, a graphic 2017 murder mystery/thriller that has at its core the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW).  Since the release of that movie, a database that more thoroughly documents MMIW has been created. This database, which is housed at the Sovereign Bodies Institute website, was created by Annita Lucchesi, a doctoral student, and cartographer. Lucchesi used the Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain information from many law enforcement entities.

 Here is a description of the database from the Sovereign Bodies Institute website:

The MMIW Database logs cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people, from 1900 to the present. There are many lists and sources of information online, but no central database that is routinely updated, spans beyond colonial borders, and thoroughly logs important aspects of the data, and overall, there is a chronic lack of data on this violence. The Database works to address that need, by maintaining a comprehensive resource to support community members, advocates, activists, and researchers in their work towards justice for our stolen sisters.

Other efforts to reliably document murdered and missing indigenous women include proposed federal legislation.  Savanna’s Act was introduced in the 115^th Congress and unanimously passed in the Senate. Thereafter, it stalled in the House. A revised version of the bill was recently re-introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski. It had 11 co-sponsors.

The congressional findings in the bill are as shocking as the Wind River coda. They include:

 (1) On some reservations, Indian women are murdered at more than 10 times the national average.

(2) American Indians and Alaska Natives are 2.5 times as likely to experience violent crimes—and at least 2 times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault crimes—compared to all other races according to the National Congress of American Indians.

(3) More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women, or 84.3 percent, have experienced violence in their lifetime according to the National Institute of Justice.

(4) More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native men, or 81.6 percent, have experienced violence in their lifetime according to the National Institute of Justice.

(5) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicide is the third leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women between 10 and 24 years of age and the fifth leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native women between 25 and 34 years of age.

(6) Investigation into cases of missing and murdered Indian women is made difficult for Tribal law enforcement agencies due to a lack of resources, … a lack of interagency cooperation, … and a lack of appropriate laws in place.

With efforts like the MMIW database and, one can hope, bipartisan federal legislation, perhaps the shameful failure to document missing and murdered native women and girls can begin to be rectified.