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Missing and Murdered: An Introductory History of MMIR


TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions violence, SA, kidnapping, human trafficking, and many other related subjects.

Purpose

We are Great Plains Action Society, an Indigenous-led non-profit of folks living in the Great Plains region, resisting colonization and re-Indigenizing the land and the world around us. At Great Plains Action Society, our mission is to address the ongoing harm caused by settler-colonialism. One of the deepest harms that that colonization has brought is the disrespect of and violence against bodily autonomy, especially non-white, non-cishetero, non-male bodies.


Under our Protect the Sacred initiative, our vision is to address and help end violence against Indigenous Peoples by providing the necessary tools to educate and empower our communities on and off the reservation. The fight to end the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relative crisis (MMIR) is not a singular issue. MMIR is an umbrella addressing many systemic issues at once. At the foundation of every successful movement is information. “Knowledge is power” isn’t just a cute cliche phrase to be taken lightly. You cannot fight what you do not understand and expect to win. This is the second installment of our Protect the Sacred zine series. In this article, we’re covering the basics of the MMIR crisis, its roots, its legacy, and what the movement surrounding the crisis is about. Also included in this article and in our zine are myriad resources so you can do your own research and find your way to supporting the cause.


Our fight for the safety and sovereignty of indigenous peoples is rooted in care and justice. No one is safe until even the most vulnerable are safe. To all the missing and murdered and the families thereof: I hope this article reaches your heart so that you might feel seen, cared for, and supported. It is the responsibility of all members of the community to keep each other safe, and to come together when we’re not. To everyone else: Keep learning. Learn more about the crises in your backyard, learn how to be a better ally, learn how to be in touch with your community and keep each other, and yourselves, safe.


With Love

The GPAS Team

Written in February/March 2025


MMIR Basics

MMIR stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, and it refers to the human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual harassment, violence and assault of indigenous peoples that happens at high rates across nations. This is an expansion on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) because as more research is slowly rolling out, it’s been found more and more that these rates of violence against indigenous people are at ludicrous levels, regardless of gender or age. 


To quote the Bureau of Indian Affairs website: “For decades, Native American and Alaska Native communities have struggled with high rates of assault, abduction, and murder of tribal members. Community advocates describe the crisis as a legacy of generations of government policies of forced removal, land seizures and violence inflicted on Native peoples.” While this crisis is simultaneously occurring in Canada, Australia, and other countries, our focus in this article is on the US. 


Indigenous people as a demographic are usually left out of important national conversations and studies, yet we suffer some of the highest rates of violence, sexual assault, suicide, and depression in the country. If you are indigenous, this will not be news to you. What might be news is that the already ludicrous rates that you see in most statistics are largely under-reporting and the orgs behind the stats will acknowledge that they are under-reporting due to lack of data.


It should be noted that 71% of Indigenous people in the USA live in urban areas– not on reservations, contributing to the difficulty of tracking this data. The following data was compiled in a 2018 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute.

  • 84.3% of Indigenous women and AFAB folks have experienced violence in their lifetime. (That’s more than one in four).

  • 56.1% of Indigenous Women and AFAB folks have experienced sexual violence. (That’s more than one in two.)

  • Out of the 5,712 MMIW related cases reported by the National Crime Information Center, only 116 were logged in the DOJ database. (only a little more than 2%).


So big hot button question: why is this happening?


Firstly, violence against indigenous peoples is how this country began. Depending on what history books you’ve read (and more relevantly, which school districts you grew up in) you might recall something about small pox blankets, the killing of buffalo, a series of futile wars between tribes and against white colonizers, or the trail of tears being contributing factors to the near extinction of indigenous people in the US. While the framing itself is problematic– erasing any contemporary reference to indigenous peoples today, current fights for sovereignty, and more; calling us extinct and ignoring the thousands of people living today both on and off rezs; acting like we’re monoliths, all one people, when we were hundreds of tribes with distinct traditions and cultures; speaking on our history like the violence was inevitable– it should be highlighted that the only way textbooks and classrooms talk about indigenous peoples is through the violence that’s been enacted upon us. It’s so normal, it’s almost the expectation. 


The Lost Generation

Boarding schools are a huge source of fear, anxiety, and disconnection for indigenous people today. Kim Neal and Abby Kelly explain it pretty well in Neal’s article for Noble and Greenough School, entitled “The Stories of a Lost Generation”. She writes, “Residential schools were an extension of forming reservations to “civilize” and “assimilate” Indigenous Americans, Kelly explains: Their dehumanizing tactics erased culture, instilled fear and set off reverberations of intergenerational trauma. Native children taken from their homes were stripped of their birth names, language and customs just as they were their traditional clothing and long hair. Ironically,’ Kelly points out, ‘the cutting of one’s hair in Indigenous cultures often represents mourning; in this case, the forced shearing marks the death of identity.’ As Kelly points out through showing survivors’ video testimonies, these crimes are shockingly recent: one man weeps as he recalls his native language being beaten out of him in the 1970s. Others recount inhumane, unsanitary conditions, malnutrition and psychological and sexual abuse.” 


Boarding schools came about because of the Indian Civilization Act Fund back in 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869. Many denominations of Christian churches started these schools with government funding and the express intent to culturally genocide the indigenous kids whom they forcibly removed from their homes. Their motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” According to The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, nearly 83% of school-age indigenous kids were attending boarding school by 1926 (that’s 60,900+ children).


You might have heard mention of mass graves of missing indigenous children being found at boarding schools both in the US and Canada in the last few years. (Here's a second article). Many of the children who attended these schools never came back, as the conditions were so bad, hundreds died from malnutrition, illnesses, the cold, and abuse. In recent years there has been a huge call across tribes for the bodies of these children to be brought home and laid to rest on their lands by their families. 


Those that did survive and graduate, would return to their families as utter strangers, if they found their families again at all. In all the years at boarding school they were never allowed to come home until after graduation so many families had no idea whether their child was lost or had died. Many survivors have come forward with their stories. It’s incredibly important that those survivors are heard. 


Healing Voices Movement is a project by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Other projects and news outlets have done the work of collecting these oral histories both in video and text formats. Here is a shortlist of places you can find Healing Voices and some other testimonies.


This is powerful healing work, coming after a horrific time in our history both as indigenous peoples and as a Nation. This work is still needed as unfortunately, the spirit of boarding schools would later evolve into the rise of CPS.


ICWA

ICWA stands for the Indian Child Welfare Act. Before ICWA’s passing in 1978, child welfare systems had risen as the next vehicle for the mass removal of indigenous children from their families. From the ICWA Law Center website: “From 1958 to 1967 the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) contracted with the Bureau of Indian Affairs through the Indian Adoption Project for the purposes of placing Native American children with white families. This effort to assimilate [indigenous] children into mainstream culture through the destruction of their families resulted in several generations of Indian children losing their identities.” Since then, CWLA has publicly apologized for their role in the perpetuation of the removal of indigenous children from their families.


Between the 1950s and ‘70s, Indigenous children were targeted by “child welfare” agencies and would be removed from their families based on poverty, not abuse or neglect. As in if you were indigenous parents and you didn’t make an arbitrary amount of money– decided on by a religious organization funded and empowered by the federal government– your children would be taken from you and placed in a white family’s home. Even if there were no signs of abuse or neglect. 


According to the Montana Department of Health and Human services website, 75-80% of indigenous families on reservations lost at least one child to the foster care system. In Minnesota from 1971-1972, 13% of all Indigenous children were in adoptive homes— this included 25% of all indigenous infants less than a year old— and 90% of placements were in non-Native homes according to the ICWA Law Center. Studies from the Association on American Indian Affairs in 1969 and 1974 indicated 25-35% of all indigenous children were removed from their families. Most times, these placements completely ignored relatives or indigenous community members who were fit and able under the foster care system’s own qualifications and most importantly wanted to adopt these children. Consistently, the adopted children would grow up to face alarming rates of substance use, mental illness, and suicide. Finally, congress put together a report that illustrated the dire need for CPS reform in 1978, and thus passed ICWA. 


ICWA is not perfect, but it is the first and last regulatory defense keeping Indigenous kids with their families and in their communities and thereby MUST be protected. There’s a provision that allows adopted children to be allowed to unseal their adoption records as an adult, which has been instrumental for many indigenous adoptees to be able to find their way back to their communities and families. ICWA establishes minimum standards before children will be removed from their parents both voluntarily and involuntarily. In involuntary cases, abuse or neglect MUST be proven in court “beyond a reasonable doubt”-- at the time this was a new standard that was not required before and frequently did not happen prior to ICWA. It also establishes placement preferences for indigenous children when they DO have to be rehomed. The first place would be the child’s extended family members, then with members of their tribe, then in other indigenous homes. Having tribes be so involved in this way also bolsters Indigenous sovereignty, along with the clause that gave tribes jurisdiction over these cases. However, ICWA did leave some room for states to take over jurisdiction. This article goes in depth about more that ICWA does to protect indigenous children and families.


That said, lots of work has gone into developing procedures around ICWA that rarely sticks. One example is a step by step manual developed by Gary Peterson, a Skokomish tribal member, and the state of Washington which resulted in a signed agreement between the state of Washington and 29 tribes within its borders. That manual and agreement have been since ignored and abandoned. 


Since ICWA’s passing by president Jimmy Carter in 1978, ICWA has been attacked by lawsuits and lawmakers dozens of times. The federal government did not collect any type of data tracking ICWA’S implementation or state’s compliance with the law, not to mention many states, especially with high indigenous populations DON’T have ICWA laws while others have them in varying capacities. Back in 2016 ICWA data was finally added to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), but President Trump delayed the provision's implementation and then his administration further omitted most of the ICWA tracking data from the final report. At the same time, states had lobbying to roll back ICWA tracking and laws. 


Private adoption attorneys and conservative think-tanks like the Goldwater Institute have also been an obstacle in ICWA’s continued existence with many smaller private lawsuits happening over the years. Most recently, Brackeen vs Haaland was the 2022/2023 lawsuit that nearly overturned ICWA altogether. NPR’s Code Switch has an excellent episode about the case that delves deeper than I will about the implications of the suit and capturing the fear and anxiety that surrounded it at the time. The gist is a white Christian family, the Brackeens, wanted to adopt an indigenous child and got litigious when they were considered last in the child’s placement process. The Brackeens sued the federal government, joined by the state of Texas and other white parents who felt entitled to adopting Indigenous children. Their suit was based on the implication that it’s racist to exclude white families from priority considerations for indigenous kids based on race. Testimonies from indigenous people who grew up adopted by white families share just how much that isn’t true in the ACLU’s article ““Keep Our Families Together”: A Law That Protects Native Families is at Risk”.


Highlight! At the time of writing, Texas has new legislation rolling through: ICWA For All (HB 2216). This would bolster ICWA by making its provisions the default for child welfare agencies even if we someday lose ICWA and it improves the child welfare system for non-indigenous kids too! It is not a 1:1 bill, but if it passes as it is, it’s an incredible step for kids in the foster care and adoption system.


Very luckily, the Supreme Court upheld ICWA in Brackeen vs Haaland, but it was a terrifying attack on indigenous sovereignty, indigenous kids, and their families. Child welfare systems prior to ICWA, and the people who fight ICWA, really illustrate how baked in MMIR and the disenfranchisement of indigenous people are to American culture and politics. In the context of other tragedies in Indigenous history, like boarding schools, it’s easy to see how indigenous peoples affected by child welfare systems are more easily disenfranchised and systemically vulnerable (more on that later). MMIR is the legacy of this horrible history. The crisis of Indigenous peoples being stolen, going missing, and experiencing violence both in our homes and out in the world is not new, and our reaction has always been to fight systemic injustices. With the rise of social media, it's easier than ever to bring new eyes to these histories and stories. Even still, despite the wonderful connections and organizing being fostered, it hasn’t gotten less complicated to fight the MMIR crisis– especially in terms of jurisdiction.


Jurisdiction

Legislatively, the subject of who even gets to investigate MMIR related crimes gets messy. The Supreme Court decided that native tribes have no inherent criminal jurisdiction over non-natives back in 1978. That supreme court decision (Oliphant vs. Suquamish Indian Tribe) covered a very narrow part of criminal law enforcement on tribal lands and implied, BUT DID NOT SPECIFY, that wherever tribes didn’t have jurisdiction, the federal government (Read: FBI) does.


 Since 1978, some states have taken over some jurisdiction; as in Minnesota where, in 1998, the state declared criminal jurisdiction over any state crime committed by a non-Indian against a non-Indian on American Indian lands and, with certain exceptions, any state crime committed by or against an American Indian on American Indian land, EXCEPT on the Red Lake or Bois Forte Reservations. In 2022, Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma gave the state jurisdiction over non-natives who commit crimes against Native American peoples on Tribal Lands. That means tribes CAN NOT prosecute non-natives who commit acts of violence against tribal people in any state. Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is actively tracking jurisdiction laws on their website with a breakdown of each state. 


Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma is an attack on tribal sovereignty and a detriment on indigenous tribes ability to bring justice for victims of domestic abuse, assault, abduction, human trafficking and more. This is a direct roadblock, by law enforcement, in indigenous people’s ability to fight the MMIR crisis. Not to mention how much of this violence is directly caused by police.


Indigenous people are “fatally shot” by police more than any other race of people. This was found in a study by the CDC published in 2023 looking at data in 2020, entitled “Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 48 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, 2020”.


Indigenous people are 5x as likely to be fatally shot as White people and almost 3x as likely to be fatally shot as Black people. Police brutality has been such an explosive conversation in the US since George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Supreme court decisions like Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma make instances of police brutality against indigenous peoples even more easy to sweep under the rug.


Disenfranchisement

The second point as to why the MMIR crisis happens is that all the same reasons people in general face all these travesties– people going missing, getting kidnapped and human trafficked, domestically abused, have families torn apart by foster care systems, or getting murdered especially as a result of a hate crime or by police– are all true for indigenous people. The difference is the vastly higher rate of disenfranchisement. 


I’ve covered a lot of history in this article. With knowing about boarding schools, how reservations started, ICWA, and all the other history that I can’t cover in a single article, it’s easy to see why indigenous people experience so much depression and trauma and disenfranchisement just by being indigenous. Forget about generational wealth, the generational inheritance for most indigenous people is dealing with, and trying to heal from, all of this trauma while the American capitalistic hellscape tries to drain every last penny from the working class and the American education system consistently rewrites our history out of existence. 


The National Indigenous Woman’s Resource Center published a report entitled “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota” by Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Sarah Deer, Guadalupe Lopez, Christine Stark, & Eileen Hudon in 2024. In it, they report on research conducted by the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition and Prostitution Research & Education, where 105 indigenous women in prostitution were interviewed. Among their many findings, they found 98% of the women interviewed either were currently or had previously been homeless. 92% had been raped. From the report summary: “80% had used outpatient substance abuse services. Many felt that they would have been helped even more by inpatient treatment. 77% had used homeless shelters. 65% had used domestic violence services. 33% had used sexual assault services.” Additionally, “Their most frequently stated needs were for individual counseling (75%) and peer support (73%), reflecting a need for their unique experiences as Native women in prostitution to be heard and seen by people who care about them. Two thirds needed housing and vocational counseling.” These statistics and the others provided by the report illustrate how many different kinds of disenfranchisement these women face. This is important context to understand other natives and non-natives in similar situations, where there is little data collection.


The statistics in general for people who go missing or are human trafficked jump each time you add some factor of vulnerability. Being homeless, being 2slgbtqia+ (especially in places where it’s not safe to be), being in poverty, not having access to healthcare especially after major illness or injury, having an addiction or other mental illness can all be considered factors to being at risk or at worse risk for human trafficking, domestic violence, or being murdered. The best way to combat these contributing factors is with better social safety nets– if you support EVERYONE in homelessness or experiencing substance abuse, even the most disenfranchised will be uplifted. All people deserve shelter, fresh food, clean drinking water, access to healthcare and that includes for addiction and mental health. Stigma around 2slgbtqia+ folks, mental illness, substance abuse, and homelessness actually contributes to the systemic problem by isolating the people who are affected, making it that much harder to seek help. 


For Indigenous people– who just by being born exist in a country that actively tries to erase our history, replace our traditions and religions by Christianizing us, and deal with the intense generational trauma of the last few centuries of colonization– these other circumstances have even more reasons to exacerbate each other, making it much harder, broadly, for indigenous people to succeed. Combatting any of these individual crises requires monumental time, money, compassion, and work.


What is the Movement Behind MMIR?

MMIR work has a few main pillars: Education, advocacy, mutual aid, and fundraising. I made these pillars up to be able to better communicate what MMIR work is. In the Purpose of this article, I emphasize the adage “Knowledge is power”. Educating people on the history that brought us this crisis and the current and ongoing cases is the very first step. That’s the whole intent behind the rallies, speeches, research, infographics and literature. Learning about the legacy of boarding schools and CPS is the first step to understanding the current systemic circumstances perpetuating the MMIR crisis. Legislators also have to be educated in their role in remedying the crisis. In that way, May 5th being Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day is no small win, as it brought MMIR further into mainstream and legislative conversations. During the Biden administration, Colorado and Minnesota have created offices dedicated to MMIR cases exclusively. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, created a Missing and Murdered Unit under the Office of Justice Services. Legislation supporting justice for victims and their families is HUGE, but it’s only a piece in the overall strategy that needs to be seen through.


Advocacy and education go hand in hand, once legislators know about the crisis and their role in it, our work moves to pushing for legislation that keeps us safe. Advocacy includes writing legislation to form task forces and safe space programs, speaking on that legislation both at outreach events like rallies and powwows and to legislators in various levels of government, representing victims in court, grant work for domestic violence prevention programs, speaking out to include indigenous people in surveying and statistic work, and more. Systemically, nothing changes without this advocacy. This is lobbying work, this is public speaking, this is sharing survivor testimonials. This is getting counseling for victims and their families. This is listening to and sharing indigenous voices.


Mutual aid is about collective/community based support. The grief of losing a loved one is already devastating, even worse is not knowing what happened, where they are, or if they’re even still alive. Mutual aid in this circumstance is about solidarity and supporting the relatives of the victims in an effort to help them heal or helping bring lost relatives home. Many orgs like us help plan memorials and funerals for victims or offer grief support.


Mutual aid can also look like holding space for people at risk. Safe third spaces for indigenous men, women, 2slgbtqia+ folks, and teens are vital for building community. This community building helps these members of our community to feel seen, and keeps vulnerable people out of dangerous situations. This can be boardgame clubs, book clubs, sewing circles, community dinners, etc. In Minneapolis, the Native American Community Clinic does incredible work holding monthly ceremony space, grief support groups, community craft nights and more. Great Plains Action hosts a Men and Boys group and a Women and Girls group weekly to provide that safe space in Sioux City.


Mutual aid is also where direct action comes in: helping in search parties, volunteering with advocacy events, and volunteering services. It can be donating to homeless shelters and supportive programs. Right now, with the current administration in mind, it could be doing the advocacy work of protecting our collective rights and speaking out when our government undermines them. There are many ways to get involved in mutual aid work.


And of course, very little of this is possible without funding behind it. When organizations like Great Plains Action Society (that’s us!) fundraise for MMIR, those donations pay for things like funeral costs, legal fees, parts of MMIR events, and funding programs for domestic violence prevention. MMIR is a huge encompassing issue that affects every indigenous person in the US today and our loved ones.


There are many ways to help out, and this crisis does not stop with Indigenous people. Do your research, be a good ally, and check out and donate to these MMIR related events and organizations in IA, NE, and MN:


 

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