Please pray and raise awareness for Cole Brings Plenty, a Lakota actor and student. He was found on april 5th. This is such an awful and cruel act of violence, im having a hard time finding the words.

April 8th Rising Hearts has organized Braids for Cole, so please wear your hair in braids and bring awareness so that Cole and his family can get justice.

*edited to correct information*

I’m wearing braids today for Cole Brings Plenty and the Brings Plenty family, who have suffered a terrible loss. Cole Brings Plenty was murdered and his braids cut off. Today we wear braids to show solidarity with the Brings Plenty family and the indigenous peoples of the world - who have faced far too much violence and oppression. We see you, we stand with you.

Rest in power, Cole.

-fae

"...we will not let despair win. We will see Nex in all the community and things that bring us joy. We will organize and fight, rest, rinse and repeat. We will see Nex in each other and so we will honor and care and protect one another. And we will honor and care and protect our trans kids so this doesn’t happen again."

The incredible co-founder of and Intersex Services Coordinator for TIGERRS, Ly Chayim (they/it/he), speaking at the Twin Cities vigil for Nex Benedict, organized by Thomas Edison High Gender and Sexuality Alliance. (transcript below)

[Ly Two Electric Boogaloo! Hello, everyone. Before I start my speech I also just want to bring light to Jacob Williamson who was an eighteen year old who also died in the past week. He was a trans man. I just have not seen people talking about him and I wanted to have a moment for him. Also before I start the speech I’d like to say “Hello” and “Thank you for being here” on behalf of Representative Liish Kozlowski who couldn’t be here because they have to be there for their own kiddo, but we talked earlier this week and they would like me to remind you that Nex and Savannah are a part of the Missing and Murdered Women and Two-Spirit Indigenous Relatives we have lost. We must uplift and fight for MMIR as much as we fight for trans youth as a whole.

Notes from this week:

I get to make a house I don’t need to go in debt for and also travel without using a car.

It’s building, exploring, crafting, adventuring, and just having fun.

It’s basically just a normal sandbox game with more creatures.

Um, the cats of course. Another note: (From a google search) Zeus is considered the ruler, protector, and father of all humans.

I promise these are not random notes in my notebook. Zeus is the name of Nex’s cat and one of Nex’s favorite games was Minecraft. I work at TIGERRS, an organization for Trans, Intersex, and Gender-Expansive kids — an organization that is youth lead and where those youth decided to create a Minecraft server an exact week before Nex’s murder. And I will be calling it a murder. These are our kids’ favorite things about the game. Nex was sixteen. They liked rock music and head banging. They were kind. They were a straight-A student. And the worst part is, they shouldn’t of had to be. They should have been able to be failing every class, to have been kind of a jerk, and to have the most niche interests the world has ever heard of. They shouldn’t have had to work to be respected. They were a child. They deserved to just be respected. But the beautiful thing is despite how terrible world the can be, they were kind, they were patient. They were remembered for lights, for being a light. Which is why you are here today.

I see Nex in the kids I work with. I see Nex in my little sibling, the same age as them, in them being sixteen, tenth grade, loving Minecraft, nonbinary, and asking them their favorite things about the game. And them looking in the mirror and seeing Nex’s burial shroud instead of their own reflections. When Nex was attacked, they were attacked with another trans friend. A friend who deserves and needs support right now. A friend who deserves flowers and light while they’re still alive, much like the kids here. Nex’s sister is also queer, also dealing with the hate their sibling faces. Our kids here deal with the same, seeing people like them once again not making it to old age. And so in the name of Nex’s love for their friend and their sibling, we will not let despair win. We will see Nex in all the community and things that bring us joy. We will organize and fight, rest, rinse and repeat. We will see Nex in each other and so we will honor and care and protect one another. And we will honor and care and protect our trans kids so this doesn’t happen again. Minnesota is intimately intertwined with what just happened in Oklahoma. We just lost Savannah in Minneapolis to a similar murder. A murder that is using the Trans Panic Defense to plead “not guilty”. The Trans Panic Defense needs to be banned in Minnesota.

This is the homework I am assigning to you today:

Contact your representatives, they’re trying to pass anti trans legislation here and we will not let that happen (I have the website on how to find your rep here up front if you wanna come up here) And you’re going to yell at them for making this state a trans refuge state, but not protecting our native trans siblings from murder. Side note: shoutout to Leigh Finke, who just spoke, Liish Kozlowski, Athena Hollins for doing the work. We see you, we love you, and we need you.

Find a trans youth in the crowd, take the crumpled $20 in your pocket and give it to them so they can go buy a rock album or go to the cat cafe or buy Minecraft or whatever else trans kids don’t get to do because we make them grow up too early. And you will ask them their favorite things, and all of the trans people in your life their favorite things. So if something happens they are not just known as a number. They’re known for naming a cat Zeus, for being patient, for teaching their friends how to head bang safely (by the way, if you’re going to head bang, please do that).

In the words of Aurora Levins Morales, slightly tweaked for tonight, “Imagine winning, this is your sacred task, this is your power. Imagine every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets in which children celebrate themselves, not as an act of revolution, but as an act of every day life. Hold hands, share water, keep imagining so that we and the children of our children’s children can live.” Our struggles are always holding hands. From the genocide of Palestinians, to the genocide of trans people, to the genocide of Native folks and the genocide of people who are in the center of that Venn Diagram. We must be steadfast in solidarity.

This murder happened after attacks on their school district by Chaiya Raichik and Ryan Walters — may they be haunted forever — for having a queer teacher. As school board races start here, pay attention. Do whatever you can to make schools safer for trans students and Native students here. Reach out to trans students across their state borders when you can. Cis people, do better. I do not just mean cis men. Cis women, also get your act together. Kids shouldn’t be fighting for themselves, that’s our job. It is also our job to call an ambulance when needed. Be uncomfortable, invest in mutual aid, flood the streets with tambourines and singing and screaming and cries so that people must pay attention to your love for us. Trans folks, hold each other, uplift each other, also get out on the streets. They are yours. Another world is possible.

May Nex’s memory be a blessing, may be found in everything you do for community, may be rooted in the earth in the cycle of rebirth, may you remember them in stories of gods in the sky, may you remember that they were not alone. They were loved. They are still loved. And the fight continues on. There’s more to their memory than just an excuse and reason to fight, than just being a number, than a vigil. They’re when our kids say their favorite things with a smile. ]

True Detective Night Country started off so great then went nowhere fast. The finale was ridiculous, but that's what I had expected by the time it arrived. Below is a list of things that had me literally rolling my eyes or simply perplexed.

1. The science stuff was ludicrous from the get go. From the totally unrealistic depiction of an arctic research station staffed by a permanent crew of scientists year-round who never leave the station, to the notion that extracting ice cores is somehow a herculean task (it's relatively easy), to the fuzzy, garbled DNA mumbo jumbo, to the idea the mine funded this whole thing just to falsify environmental data (which is usually done by just, you know, making it up or presenting it selectively), not a shred of it made sense. It was stupid, half-baked nonsense. It was never fully explained why their DNA stuff was going to "save the world," or why they'd kill someone over it.

2. In S1, the spiral and hanging things, as well as the "time is a flat circle" stuff made sense as the distortion of a traditional rural folk practice by a deranged cult leader but here it made no sense. Why did Clark make those hanging things? What's the significance of the spiral? Why did he say time is a flat circle etc.? Annie spent time with him in that creepy RV. Was she into that, too, or did he do that after she died?

3. The implication that the spiral and "She" are part of the Native women's belief system.. Is this a thing or did they make it up for the show? "She" is probably meant to be Mother Earth, but this whole spiritual/supernatural part of the story felt cheesy and unoriginal to me.

4. I'm still confused about the frozen scientist who screamed when they found him. There was some comment later about amputating both legs of someone and not being able to speak to him yet, and then that whole issue disappeared. At some point, they might have mentioned in passing this person died? But they never explained how that guy was alive in the first place. There was some brief mention of how the scientists were discovering some kind of life extension superpower in this DNA. I thought it might come round to that but in the end there was no more thought given to the guy who was still magically alive and all they said about the DNA was it could "save the world."

4. Fiona Shaw was criminally underutilized. I loved her character and would love to have seen more of her.

5. Who left the tongue? Was it Peter Prior's dad?

6. How did Holden die? A car crash, but what happened? Where was Liz when it happened?

I liked that they built the story around the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, and that in the end it turned out the women were the answer all along but no one even thought to ask them. It made the point that Native women are only visible to white law enforcement when they are murdered and even then, don't get the justice they deserve.

Great acting performances and it was a real treat to watch the actors interact. But for me, the emotional impact was blunted by the cheesiness and implausibility of other parts.

Today is May 5th, the national day of remembrance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, children, Trans, and Two-Spirited people. Here are some statistics and facts that more people should be aware of along with resources as I go.

• On average, the 1st sexual assault on an Indigenous child happens at 13 years old.

• More than 4 out of 5 American Indian and Alaskan Native Women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

•Indigenous People are murdered at a rate 10x the National Average.

• Most violent crimes perpetrated on Native People are committed by non Native People.

• The 2nd Leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaskan Native girls aged 1-4 is homicide.

• Recently A Statistics Canada analysis found 81 per cent of Indigenous women who had been in the child-welfare system had been physically or sexually assaulted in their life.

• Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among Native Girls and Women aged 10-24 and jumps to 5th from 25-34

• There were 506 cases of MMIWG in 71 urban cities across the U.S., In New Mexico alone, there is the highest incidents of MMIW sitting at 78 cases. Keep in mind that cases involving LGBTQ2S+ have been undercounted.

Here is an update of the bodies of Indigenous children found on Residential School properties.

As of March 2022, 10,028 unmarked graves have been found at former residential schools across Canada.

Under the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, The US is reported to begin searching residential schools, through the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiativebut it’s not currently clear when this will start.

There is so much overwhelming information, but there does seem to be some hope, 16 states including Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Kansas have taken legislative action to address MMIWR, and hopefully along with the search of residential schools, we can start bringing all of our relatives home.

First off, if you’re not in the right mental state right now and are unable to handle talk of dark, triggering topics then please come back later or keep scrolling. Please take care of yourselves. The world is a dark and scary place at times and I care about the well-being of other people to warn you ahead of time. This is also for the folks who just want the comfy escape of fandom. You don’t have to engage with politics if you don’t want to, so here is this warning. ☺️

I get it. Enjoy Yautja ya’ll. ❤️

The TDLR of this post is Free Palestine and just me ranting about the media lying and my anger at injustice.

Love you guys. ❤️

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve been relatively forgetful of Tumblr lately, and for good reason. My focus has been shifted on my writing and current events that are unfolding on a massive scale. I have followed the events occurring in Palestine for about ten years, rallying for their freedom from the Zionist colonial settler state.

I will in no shape ever support apartheid and genocide, nor ethnic cleansing. It’s monstrous and there’s no excuse whatsoever to justify it. There is no whataboutism, period. You can’t justify the murder and targeted attacks of civilians. I’m also thoroughly disgusted in the government, good ole USA, and the media for continuing to peddle the outright proven lies the IDF and Israel say. They’re not even being quiet about wanting to commit genocide!

If you disagree with reality, then this ain’t the blog for you!

Supporting people who have been oppressed for 75 fucking years isn’t anti-semitism—that’s the propaganda speaking and isn’t factual. Talk with real anti-Zionist Jewish people and they will agree that what’s happening is monstrous and they don’t support it. I stand in solidarity with the oppressed. I do not represent my country’s backing of this fuckshit. I have, and will continue, to defend people’s right to peace and freedom over this heinous bullshit.

I’ve cried more than I ever have seeing LITTLE KIDS digging in the rubble of their home to find their family without a tear in their eyes because what Israel is doing is NORMAL FOR THEM.

I HATE to bring real world events and politics to fandom, but it intersects with our daily lives and the world around us. I disagree with connecting the real world with fandom being a bad thing. I have LONG been an activist for justice in my personal life, and I will continue to do so. It’s who I am and I will always fight for the world to be a better place.

No, I am not “Anti-Semitic”. There is decades of research backing the evil that is being perpetrated by Israeli occupying forces.

Please take the time to do independent research and listen to Palestinian voices and Jewish people who say that this doesn’t represent Judaism. Please do not send hate to Jewish friends or people you don’t know. Please do not send hate to Palestinian or Arab friends or people you don’t know.

I grew up in Post-9/11 America and it’s all happening again. I remember it clearly. The media is doing what it does best. Pitting good well-meaning people against each other with their lies. :/ Please, please, take the time to talk and meet with people and find the humanity in one another. I beg you.

We all want the same things.

Peace and safety.

I’m horrified that my hard earned tax dollars are funding this genocide and they’re saying “we can afford it” when they can’t bother to pass Affordable Healthcare for All, actually fix this corporate greed of artificially inflating prices, they can’t bother to help our veterans who are ending their lives daily because our government turns their backs on them, they continue to harm and demonize black and indigenous people, ignore entirely the missing and murdered indigenous women and children, put literal children in fucking cages instead of stopping the destabilization of the global South (South America+), do nothing to defend our most vulnerable citizens such as LGBTQ+ kids and adults, refused to codify the right to reproductive healthcare, and expect US to pay for ANOTHER WAR that has nothing to do with our own perceived “freedom”.

I wish I could hug every person who’s suffering and solve all their problems. I, too, am struggling, more these days, we ALL are, but I sincerely hope that GOOD WILL PREVAIL.

It has to, right?

I love you guys, all you faceless folks behind your screens and stuff. We don’t personally know each other, but I see you and I hear you.

I pray for the people who are being killed in the darkness, the Congolese who are being murdered for metal that’s used in our tech, and every other person fighting for their basic right to PEACE and a fulfilled life where they are safe! Everyone deserves that! One day the world will be a better place and I hope our actions and fight for it will come true. I wish for our distant future folks to look back and see that we tried, as best as we could, and gave a shit.

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day. I wish you a cold pillow, your shower to always be the perfect temperature, the commute to be easy and traffic free, and that every good boy and girl cat and dog gives you the snuggles that you need.

Peace be upon you guys. ❤️

Hi, again — thank you for putting my questions out, I appreciate folks engaging on the colonization posts. It’s dangerous, especially right now.

I recall Poppy claiming that Zena was Indigenous in discussions on racialized topic, but unfortunately I can’t find a link. I know the context tied to something around racial issues (landback? prof flowers?). I usually don’t look further into those claims from white ppl when they use inidgeneity claims while getting called out for a racist comments or perspective. It’s a nuanced issue between Black & Native communities & ppl mess up sometimes. These moments are times to learn, not deny & get shitty. It’s also a common tactic used by white folks — being Native doesn’t mean you can’t say anti-black shit or be anti-black.

Anyway, I am very active in organizing on MMIR/MMIW. On the ground, in communities. I have multiple missing/murdered relatives. Northern border towns are dangerous near my home. I disclose this because the following context drew First Nation/Native attention.

I suspect the Indigenous claim ties came up while folks engaged Native issues in tense racial discussions. However, aside from the claims, many of us have seen Poppy use the movements centered around our missing & murdered relatives to lash out at Black women during the say her name situation. She did not engage a public dialogue with organizers. She spoke for us and in a harmful way. I understand the pushback for say her name. But pulling Natives into this as if Black women STOLE from us is actually harmful. It also indicates, a lack of connection with our communities & people. Over simplified arguments on landback are just as harmful. The US has always wanted our land & resources — they STILL target our jurisdictions. They are still focused on taking our homelands. Nonnative don’t see it because they were socialized not to see it. These streamer are influencing white youth that will have power to impact our ppl. The US education socializes citizens. Untangling yourselves from that socialization is KEY in movement building & Indigenous/Black conceptual frameworks are powerful. They will sharpen any anti-colonial movement. They are imperative in order for movements to NOT become refined versions of settler colonialism. This shit is real. Obviously Indigenous erasure (genocide) directly resulted in nonnative ignorance on our tribes & movements. It is pretty extreme even in queer contexts & for us, kinda horrifying. These are not rhetorical issues — they have impacts that many nonblack & nonnative folks won’t see unless pointed out. And even then, it takes time to flesh them out. It is truly laborious & triggering as fuck. It also derails our work.

We have murderer and missing Afro-Native relatives and that hashtag HELPED with visiblizing Black/Native intersections of racialized murder & trafficking. As if there aren’t Black Native families/people. It is dehumanizing. We are not props in your arguments against Black Americans. The hashtags assisted in furthering deep discussions between our communities on US/ Canadian anti-black/anti-indigenous issues rooted in US /Canadian settler colonialism/capital colonialism/white supremacy.

There is a very common thing settlers do when they’re called out on racial issues — they use Native ppl/identity as props in their arguments to bolster their arguments when called out for antiblackness. Everyone in this country is socialized to be antiblack and anti-indigenous. Even Native ppl and black ppl! It’s not personal, it’s systemic. We are people tho and we see white streamers like Poppy. Streamers who should be our allies. Often we won’t engage because…well, emotional economics & cost/benefit analytics. There is a very long history of settlers and the US settler nation-state using Black/Native struggles in ways to create antagonisms. It happens interpersonally, as seen with Poppy’s argument. And it happens in policy. The systemic roots of antagonisms between Native ppl & Black ppl stem back far (chattel slavery —5-tribes/genocide—buffalo soldiers hunting/killing Natives). Our communities have direct relatives from these times, they not just called ancestors, they are our precious relatives — it wasn’t that long ago (example: my mom was raised by my great-grandmother who was born in 1870, my grandmother died at 107).

It’s all become a mentality woven into the fabric of US society and settler mentalities poison social movements.

Anyway, I’ll ask the other person who brought it to my attention. Maybe they’ll remember. Sorry for typos. It’s a lot to comment on.

.

To raise awareness of the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, two-spirit people and relatives (#MMIW/R), activists in Minnesota use Valentine’s Day, February 14, to hold events, along with May 5 being the official MMIW day. [Video]

Today I wear my braids on behalf of Cole Brings Plenty. Please continue to raise awareness for our brother taken too soon.

https://mmiwhoismissing.org/

https://www.nativewomenswilderness.org/mmiw/

https://www.bia.gov/service/mmu

https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/

Sheine Lende review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: urban fantasy, mystery, Indigenous storytelling, historical fantasy

Elatsoe review

Big thanks to Netgalley, Levine Querido, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really enjoyed Elatsoe so I was super excited to see there was going to be a prequel about her grandmother! This book ends with the suggestion that there's more stories from this world to come, so I'm hoping we get something from four/six-great-grandmother (more from Sheine Lende or Elatsoe would also be good, I'm not picky)

Much like with Ellie, Shane's story centers around a mystery, though this one is a missing person's case and not a murder. Shane's mother, Lorenza, utilizes her dogs and ghost dog to find people who are missing. More recently Shane has begun helping her and the two make a good ghost-calling, person-finding duo. I liked reading about how they tracked people down and how their work got spread around by word-of-mouth.

I was a little confused on when this story occurred, so I found the author's note saying it was the 1970s to be helpful. In this world at this point in time, fairy rings are still being implemented and they're a relatively new technology still. It was interesting to see how people talked about them and the various opinions and worries people had, especially considering they're so present in Ellie's time. The missing person's case is tied up closely with fairy rings, though in a somewhat unusual way, so there was some light dealings with the Fair Folk and, more interestingly, with an ex-academic who specialized in them.

When her mother disappears, Shane takes over both the investigation for the missing kid(s) and the investigation for her mother's disappearance. She actually finds the older girl pretty quickly, and by complete accident, and they have a chance to spend some time together and bond before they make it back to everyone else. I liked that Shane and Donnie became fast friends and were eager to help one another out. I also appreciated that Donnie's grandparents were more than willing to travel with the girls and Shane's younger brother, Marco, to various places in order to find Donnie's younger brother (the missing boy) and Shane's mom.

Despite having a few family members remaining, Shane has a good support system, from her friend Amelia, to their elderly neighbor, to her newfound friendship with Donnie and the help of Donnie's grandparents. Ellie has that too in her book, but she starts that way, Shane starts by feeling alone and I feel for this type of YA adventure, having a large support system of mixed teenagers and adults really breaks the mold. I also liked that the adults, particularly the newer ones, were willing to defer ton Shane's expertise and research and didn't just insist they were right.

Shane is confident in herself, though not to the point of ego, and is able to draw on her knowledge, what her mother taught her, and her own investigative skills to connect dots and come up with next steps. She's overall friendly but knows when to put her foot down and is more than capable of being firm and even intimidating when necessary. She's still coming into her ghost-raising power, so I also liked seeing her knowledge and experimentation in that area.

Beyond the mystery element, this book also deals with trauma, family, and the effects of colonialism. Shane, Marcos, and Lorenza definitely had a hard time for a while, are technically still having a hard time, and it's a direct result of historical and modern colonialist greed. The family also suffered some major losses when Shane was younger, resulting in there being only a few family members and the dispersal of their home community. Shane and Marcos both still have a lot of emotions about that, albeit different ones since Marcos was in utero when this was going on and only knows the aftermath. Shane also struggles with not knowing or misremembering traditional Lipan stories and has several moments when she deeply wishes there were community members around she could engage with. It was definitely heartbreaking to read about those aspects, but I did enjoy seeing Shane begin to set them to rights. I also think the loss of their original support system and the growth of a different one help mirror each other and the path of healing in the story.

Overall I liked this story and think it stands well both on its own and as an addition to the world of Elatsoe. Shane definitely has an interesting story, and I would say this book serves as both a mystery and a healing journey. I'm looking forward to whatever Little Badger writes next!

ISLETA PUEBLO, N.M. (Reuters) - As Detective Kathleen Lucero drives along a dirt road towards the Manzano mountains east of her New Mexico Native American village, she recalls the time earlier in her career when an elder told his family he was heading this way to water his cows. He didn’t come back.

It was back in 2009 when Lucero was a patrol officer, learning how to stop her people becoming part of the U.S. epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives (MMIWR).

She filed a report on the elder. Her police chief told her that was not enough. Following that advice, she started networking with outside police agencies.

“We got a hit,” said Lucero, a member of a traditional Isleta family, whose mother disowned her for a week when she decided to join the pueblo’s police 17 years ago because she wanted to become an "advocate" for her people.

Nine hours after going missing on the Isleta Pueblo just south of Albuquerque, the elder was found over 400 miles away by an Oklahoma traffic cop after his car ran out of gas, Lucero said. He was showing early signs of dementia.

That case was an early lesson that Lucero took to heart.

These days, as Isleta Pueblo’s chief criminal investigator, Lucero does not judge a victim for doing drugs, or running away. She doesn’t wait for them to show up. She starts investigating, posting their name and photo on social media, calling law enforcement contacts, maybe even television stations. Since 2015 she has handled eight such cases, with seven people found alive and one still missing.

“I believe that somebody knows somebody, and it keeps networking,” said Lucero.

Her prioritization of missing people, backed by Isleta police chief Victor Rodriguez, is not the norm amongst U.S. and tribal law enforcement where a jurisdictional maze and lack of resources contribute to an estimated 4,200 indigenous cases remaining unsolved, according to over a dozen law enforcement officials and policymakers Reuters spoke to.

These gaps have led Native American police Reuters met with to take matters into their own hands, some forming their own missing units. Still, they remain a minority amongst tribes, most of which lack the funds and staff to make missing members a priority, according to law enforcement and lawyers.

Driven by decades of Native American activism, data showing the scale of the crisis, and the appointment of the United States' first ever Native American cabinet secretary Deb Haaland, the issue of missing indigenous people entered the U.S. mainstream in the last five years.

State taskforces, federal and local investigative units and data initiatives have sprung up, with tribal and federal law enforcement reporting improved coordination.

Even federal law enforcement officials admit that Native American police are severely underfunded by the federal government, which provides public safety to tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). On many reservations and pueblos that leads to low staffing, substandard investigations or no investigations of missing cases.

The trans cult just have to give themselves another day. And to have this just two days after May 5th which is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is just extra disgusting.

ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- Asbury Park has declared May 7 "Drag Queen Visibility Day."

The proclamation comes after several pieces of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation were proposed across the country.

A day-long festival will be held on May 7 highlighting drag performers.

The proclamation will also be recognized by the governor's office.

May 5 is commemorated as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The day became recognized in 2017 when Montana Senators Steve Daines and Jon Tester responded to the murder of Hanna Harris on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, as well as the cumulation of other murders and abductions of Native women and girls. Since then, grassroots efforts at local, regional, national, and international levels have grown as Indigenous families, advocates, and Indigenous nations continue to call attention to the violence and galvanize action in response to the MMIWG crisis.

We encourage you to join community actions this week to raise awareness and call on governments to be accountable to the injustices and systemic barriers embedded in federal and local legislation that perpetuate this crisis. As Hanna Harris’s mother, Malinda Limberhand, aptly said: “As a mother, nothing will replace the loss of my daughter, but by organizing to support the National Day of Awareness and creating the changes needed, I know it will help others. And Hanna and so many others will not be forgotten.”

7 Actions to Take for National Day of Awareness for #MMIWG

1. Wear red, take a photo, and share it on social media to bring awareness of #MMIWG.

Share a photo. Make sure to use hashtags #MMIW, #MMIWG, #MMIWG2S, #MMIWActionNow, and #NoMoreStolenSisters!

2. Join the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center in these 3 calls to action: 

Urge your Senators to pass Family Violence Prevention & Services (#FVPSA) reauthorization with key Tribal provisions: n8ve.net/Ts6M5

Tag The Justice Department, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and the US Interior on social media and demand they immediately implement the Not Invisible Act

Tag the Justice Department and the FBI on social media and demand they improve MMIW data collection under Savanna’s Act . #MMIW, #MMIWG, #MMIWG2S, #MMIWActionNow #NoMoreStolenSisters

3. Watch "Voices Unheard."

A short film by Native Hope. Marty Coulee is a Native American entrepreneur living the good life. When her Native American business partner Jess, vanishes without a trace on a business trip to Arizona, Marty becomes a voice for the voices unheard.

4. Watch “Bring Her Home.”

This film follows three Indigenous women – an artist, an activist, and a politician – as they fight to vindicate and honor their missing and murdered relatives who have fallen victims to a growing epidemic across Indian country. Despite the lasting effects from historical trauma, each woman must search for healing while navigating racist systems that brought about this very crisis.

5. Listen to our Indigenous Rights Radio interview with Leya Hale.

Leya Hale (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Navajo) is a storyteller, documentary filmmaker, and a producer with Twin Cities PBS (TPT). Her recent film, "Bring Her Home," addresses the epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in the United States.

6. Include Two-Spirit Relatives in Awareness of MMIWG2S.

It is imperative to include Two-Spirit relatives in the raising of awareness of MMIWG. Read about the meaning of Two-Spirit to learn about the many intersections of violence that threaten Two-Spirit people. To learn more and give support, visit organizations such as Families of Sisters in Spirit and read this organizing toolkit from the Sovereign Bodies Institute. For immediate help with a case of domestic violence or dating violence, please visit StrongHearts Native Helpline's online Chat Advocacy or helpline (1-844-7NATIVE).

7. Claim free print subscription for NIWRC’s Restoration of Native Sovereignty and Safety for Native Women magazine, courtesy of Urban Indian Health Institute.