Missing Indigenous Women

“Indigenous Women Keep Going Missing in Montana” — Vice News, 2020, 11:26 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib0GDAPeymo

(Extra footage is shown from 11:28 to 14:20)

Native American women are nearly three times more likely to face sexual violence compared to white women, and homicide is the fourth leading cause of death for those under 20. Moreover, approximately half of all cases involving murdered indigenous women in Montana are misclassified as things like suicide, overdose, or exposure.

This video speaks to the power of data. Since there is no comprehensive data set on missing indigenous women, we do not know the scope of the problem. A related problem exists in the ethnic classification of these missing women. As Sociologist Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear explains, this is an effect of colonization and the erasure of Native American cultures.

The video also touches on the confusion created by having often-overlapping bureaucratic agencies investigating crimes. Depending on where a body is discovered or where a person is reported missing, responsibility can fall on tribal, state, or federal authorities, creating a “jurisdictional minefield”.

From the video’s description: There’s an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women, and Native communities have had enough.