The System Didn’t Forget Them. It Was Built to Look Away
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and the Legacy of Legal Erasure
They are mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunties. They disappear at rates that would trigger national outcry if they were white, suburban, and well-covered by the nightly news. But in Indian Country, when a woman goes missing, there is often no headline, no search party, and no justice.
In 2016, over 5,700 Indigenous women and girls were reported missing. The U.S. Department of Justice recorded just 116 of those cases. That’s not a data error. That’s a decision repeated year after year by institutions that were never built to protect Native lives.
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This is not a series of tragedies. It is not a cultural problem. It is not an accident.
This is a crisis of colonial continuity: a modern system designed in the image of a violent past, still doing the work of erasure, control, and silence.
The epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is not unsolved. It is structurally ignored. And while governments stall, tribal communities are doing what Washington won’t: finding their own, mourning their own, and demanding a reckoning.
The Numbers Don’t Lie. They Indict
The scale of violence against Native women in the United States is not just disturbing. It is mathematically damning.
According to a landmark study by the National Institute of Justice, more than 84% of Native American and Alaska Native women will experience violence in their lifetimes. More than half will experience sexual violence, and over 55% will face physical abuse by an intimate partner.
Native women are:
2.5× more likely to be raped
2× more likely to be stalked
1.7× more likely to be murdered
And in some regions, 10× more likely to be killed than the national average
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists homicide as the third-leading cause of death for Native women aged 10 to 24.
A full 96% of Native women who experience sexual violence report that their assailant was non-Native.
This isn’t failed protection. It’s calculated neglect.
When the government fails to track, fails to act, and fails to protect, that’s not brokenness. That’s design.
Built to Fail: How U.S. Law Abandoned Native Women
If a Native woman is raped on her own land, and her attacker is non-Native, justice is not just unlikely. It is structurally denied.
In Oliphant v. Suquamish (1978), the Supreme Court ruled that tribal courts could not prosecute non-Natives. The result has been thousands of non-Native perpetrators committing crimes on Native land without fear of trial.
Federal prosecutors — the fallback — declined nearly 40% of felony cases from Indian Country. Some were labeled “low priority.” Others simply disappeared.
Even when VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) was reauthorized in 2013, tribes were only given limited authority to prosecute non-Natives, and only for domestic violence. It took until 2022 to expand that power to include sex trafficking and child abuse.
The U.S. needed until the third decade of the 21st century to let tribal nations prosecute rapists on their own land.
This is not bureaucracy. This is betrayal.
They’re Not Waiting. Tribal Nations Are Leading the Way
While Washington stalls, Native communities are organizing search parties, passing legislation, and developing their own alert systems.
In North Dakota, Feather Alerts notify the public when Indigenous people go missing.
In Montana, tribal task forces are investigating cold cases.
In California, the Yurok Tribe declared a public safety emergency to focus resources on MMIW.
Groups like the Sahnish Scouts use sonar, drones, and boots on the ground to search for the missing.
The Urban Indian Health Institute has documented thousands of cases that the federal government ignored. Sovereign Bodies Institute and others are building Native-run databases to collect what the DOJ refused to count.
This isn’t coping. This is resistance.
It is sacred work.
The phrase “She is somebody” echoes through these communities, a reminder that every Indigenous woman is a relative, not a statistic.
This Isn’t Just a Crisis. It’s a Test
The epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is not a mystery. It is a test of whether this country can confront the systems it built to disappear people.
The federal government has delayed.
Law enforcement has failed.
The media has ignored.
And most of America has looked away.
But Native communities never have.
They’ve searched when no one else would.
They’ve named their daughters when others erased them.
They’ve demanded justice when the system delivered only silence.
Call to Action: Break the Silence For All the Lives Made Invisible
Call your representatives
Support Indigenous-led MMIW organizations
Demand the implementation of Savanna’s Act and full tribal jurisdiction over all crimes on Native land
But don’t stop there.
Because the same systems that erase Native women are vanishing others too, in ICE detention centers, at the southern border, in the name of immigration enforcement.
Just as Indigenous families search for their daughters, immigrant families are begging for answers about loved ones detained, deported, or disappeared.
This is not just about policy. It’s about who gets counted, who gets searched for, and who the state allows to vanish.
If we refuse to speak up, we become part of the silence.
If we rise together, we become impossible to ignore.
The system was built to look away, but we don’t have to.
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Call Your Members of Congress
Find their contact info at: https://www.congress.gov/members
Sample Script:
Hi, my name is [Your Name], and I’m a constituent from [ZIP Code].
I’m calling to demand [Senator/Representative NAME] take immediate action on the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Specifically, I want them to:
Fully fund Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act
Restore full tribal criminal jurisdiction
Create a federal MMIW alert system
Investigate disappearances in immigrant detention
Native and immigrant communities deserve protection, visibility, and justice.
Thank you.
Support Indigenous-Led MMIW Organizations
StrongHearts Native Helpline | 📞 1-844-762-8483
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Bibliography
Amnesty International. Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA. London: Amnesty International Publications, 2007.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Homicides of American Indians/Alaska Natives — National Violent Death Reporting System, 2003–2018.” MMWR Surveillance Summaries 70, no. 8 (2022): 1–37.
National Institute of Justice. “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and the Criminal Justice Response: What Is Known.” NIJ Journal no. 277 (2016): 1–23.
Sovereign Bodies Institute. Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & People (MMIW/P) Database.
Urban Indian Health Institute. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls: A Snapshot of Data from 71 Urban Cities in the United States, 2018–2019. Seattle: UIHI, 2020.
Snyder, Susan M. “Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe.” In Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States, edited by David S. Tanenhaus. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008.
U.S. Congress. Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, Public Law 113‑4, 127 Stat. 54.
U.S. Congress. Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022, Public Law 117‑7, 136 Stat. 299.
U.S. Department of Justice. “Savanna’s Act.” Last modified March 2020. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-new-initiative-implement-savanna-s-act-data-collection
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons: Supplemental Data.” Washington, DC: BJS, 2021.
We are living on stolen land.
I’d din’t know that the women are murdered.