On May 5, dozens of Indigenous people and allies gathered at a pond in Central Park to observe the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. They wore red, some with red-painted handprints pressed across their mouths. Chenae Bullock, a Shinnecock and Montauk woman, began the event with a water prayer. Not long after, the sky opened up to release what the Menominee and Oneida activist Sutton King called “the tears of our ancestors.”
The group walked in the pouring rain to Columbus Circle, or “Colonizer Circle,” which they wrapped in red before leading a candle-lit vigil. “Columbus wasn’t a hero, he was a trafficker of Indigenous women,” King later wrote on Instagram. Finally, the group walked twelve more blocks to Times Square, publicly mourning and speaking out on behalf of the unrecorded number of Indigenous relatives lost every year to sexual, domestic, and colonial violence.
King is president of the Urban Indigenous Collective (UIC), the organization that organized the walk as part of its annual NYC+ East Coast Summit for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit relatives (MMIWGT2S). These groups face disproportionately high rates of violence, disappearance, and murder for causes related to the ongoing genocide of Indigenous people through cultural, governmental, and environmental factors. Under its MMIWGT2S NYC+ Project, the UIC works year-round to document and publicize these injustices and promote policy solutions through research, while also providing resources for survivors and their families.
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As of 2016, nearly 6,000 Indigenous women and girls were missing in the United States, according to the National Crime Information Center. The real number is likely much higher, since crimes against Indigenous people are notoriously under-reported due to systemic Indigenous erasure. Nationwide, Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic, a statistical average that masks more extreme local crises; in some predominantly Indigenous counties, their murder rate is over ten times the national average. Two-thirds of this violence involves non-Indigenous perpetrators, and much of it — also largely erased — is directed toward transgender and Two-Spirit people.
The situation is beyond dire, yet overwhelmingly ignored. It’s similar to the bypassing and erasure that occurs in the psychedelics and wellness spaces, where non-Indigenous practitioners and seekers benefit from medicine and practices cultivated by Indigenous peoples without understanding their cultural histories or present-day struggles (an imbalance UIC president King aims to rectify through her work with the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund). To harvest benefits from a community without dialogue or reciprocal solidarity is to perpetuate a colonial cycle that allows violence to continue unchecked.
Defying apathy, erasure, and the reduction of beloved relatives to statistics, the UIC gathered Indigenous people and allies from across the country (and for its virtual events, two continents) in May for its East Coast Summit. This series of seven events was designed to honor stories,acknowledge and process deep grief, and foster the exchange of ideas for addressing the MMWIGT2S crisis.
The Urban Indigenous Collective, founded in New York City in 2019, opened a brick-and-mortar community center last year. Among its various initiatives, the UIC’s MMWIGT2S NYC+ Project conducts research on the crisis, advocates for policy reform, and supports urban Natives in collaboration with local organizations and tribal leaders. They held the first East Coast Summit in 2021, and thanks to community feedback, it’s blossomed into a holistic slate of events across the city and online, emphasizing accessibility. This year’s summit drew participants from ages six to 88, according to Trinity Simms, the UIC’s program associate for MMWIGT2S, who spearheaded the summit in tandem with her “sisters” in the organization.
Simms, who is of Afro-Indigenous Mattaponi and Pamunkey descent, found the opening prayer walk in the rain “grounding,” especially given that water “is a conduit of memory and healing for Indigenous people.” She was similarly touched by the Summit’s final event, which launched the UIC’s new monthly book club with readings and open mic storytelling.
“It was a big collective sanctuary, and a healing space for survivors and their families,” says Simms. “That’s something we really need, to center our alternative modes of being and living as Indigenous people.”
Further events included a panel discussion featuring Indigenous matriarchs and activists from the surrounding region, whose voices are often overlooked given the dearth of resources for Natives on the East Coast. Another event was a talk called the “Web of Living Relations” by Kianna Pete, whose work explores the interconnectedness of climate change, ecological violence, and the MMWIGT2S crisis; for instance, she underscores the direct link between human trafficking, sexual violence, pipeline-building, and the “man camps” housing oil-extracting workers that all too commonly encroach on Indigenous reservations. Simms live-streamed Pete’s “incredible” talk, which “went into depth about the complexities of the issue [and] specific calls to action.”
The Summit also centered the voices of Two-Spirit activists like Lady Shug, a Diné drag artist that Simms calls “like a big auntie,” who spoke more specifically to the Indigenous queer, transgender, and Two-Spirit experience. Research suggests that up to 85 percent of Two-Spirit individuals have experienced sexual violence — yet this research is incredibly scarce, as it concerns a marginalized group within a marginalized group.
“MMIWGT2S is a systemic issue, meaning that Indigenous women, girls, trans, and Two-Spirit people are not at increased risk of violence because of individual behaviors, but due to institutionalized systems of oppression,” Lady Shug wrote on Instagram, citing the violent imposition of gender norms by Christian missionaries as a historic example. “More police, more people in prison, and more laws addressing gender violence won’t meaningfully address these matters because cis-heteropatriarchy is a pillar of the colonial capitalist state.”
During the Summit’s “Indigenizing AI” event, the UIC launched its new MMIP Policy Tracker, an ambitious undertaking leveraging artificial intelligence to compile and track all state or national legislation related to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People in the US. Created by the center’s IT manager Austin Serio, a Two-Spirit member of the Chicoran Shakori tribe, the tracker evaluates government interventions by tracking all relevant policies introduced or passed since 2020 on both a map and interactive spreadsheet.
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Policies are tagged according to their strategies and degree of collaborative input, allowing users to filter and discover (for example) that only Colorado and New Mexico have implemented policies that both use gender-inclusive language and incorporate feedback from survivors and their relatives. The tracker also includes the UIC’s “pros” and “cons” on each policy. For instance, Colorado’s 2021 executive order establishing a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force is praised for its complexity and inclusion, while questioned for its disproportionate participation of law enforcement.
The Policy Tracker — much like the UIC’s glossary and the MMIP Database it runs in partnership with the Sovereign Bodies Institute to track MMIWGT2S+ cases on the East Coast— aims to combat “data genocide,”or the erasure of Indigenous populations in the tracking of public services like education, healthcare, and the judicial system. Law enforcement and healthcare professionals regularly misidentify Indigenous people or fail to even try, such that incidents of violence are routinely under-reported and poorly investigated, with evidence getting “lost” and cases quickly going “cold.” This erasure extends to the policy level, where there is a profound lack of culturally competent systems and community support around child care, health, and economic equity for Indigenous peoples. The genocide of Indigenous people persists throughout all layers of American society.
In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who is Indigenous, announced the creation of the United States’ first Missing and Murdered Unit, which now has 26 offices with agents across 15 states. Yet this is just one step to addressing a vast and multifaceted crisis. The UIC’s 2023 Final Report, the culmination of years of work and research, recommends further interventions, from greater accountability in data tracking to the creation of “Feather Alert” systems and MMIWGT2S task forces in the Tri-State area.
Of course, much of the healing that is needed goes beyond data and policy. With the MMIWGT2S crisis affecting so many lives and families, there is a deep need for spaces that facilitate personal healing and connection, something the organizers of the East Coast Summit understand intimately. “During the summit, people will come [who] have had things that happened to their family related to the crisis, but they haven’t figured out a way to express or work through it with community,” says Delfina Roybal, the UIC’s Communications Manager, who is Diné and Mexican. “We make sure that it’s a safe space for that, over and over again.”
After investing so much energy in the Summit, Trinity Simms looks back with awe at its seven powerful events. Seeing community members speak out, read poetry, and repost memories on their social media reminds her how much these events are needed. “I’m grateful that we were able to give space to address this topic that the media has a lot of apathy for, that people are very desensitized about,” she says, nodding to the support of her team. “I’m just grateful that we were able to do this.”
