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Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives: Home

This guide is designed as a portal to resources for researching the Missing and Murdered Women, Girls, Trans, Two-Spirit, and Relatives crisis.

Introduction

This research guide is designed to raise awareness, educate, support research, and promote advocacy regarding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, Two-Spirit, and Relatives crisis that is pervasive throughout North America and worldwide.. As such, it brings together resources for identifying academic publications, news, federal and state legislation, reports, organizations, creative projects, and more. 

The MMIW crisis is far reaching and complex. As the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center emphasizes, "It is important to understand the connection between domestic, dating, and sexual violence and the high incidence of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is not new. It is more than an epidemic—instead is part of the spectrum of violence experienced by Native women. This crisis of MMIW has deep roots in colonization and genocide and can be attributed to the lack of legal protections as a result of the systematic erosion of tribal sovereignty stretching back more than 500 years" (https://www.niwrc.org/policy-center/mmiw). We hope that the advocacy resources will inspire you to become involved in global, national, and local community efforts to raise awareness, find solutions, and seek justice.

Created in partnership with Dr. Stevie Lee, Associate Director of DEI Native American Initiatives at DU, the DU Native Student Alliance, Dr. Angel Hinzo at the University of San Diego, and Caldera Productions, this guide is an ongoing project and we welcome your feedback and recommendations for additional resources which you can send to jennifer.bowers@du.edu.

Photo courtesy of Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 2.0

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the librarians at the University of New Mexico and the X̱wi7x̱wa Library at the University of British Columbia whose outstanding research guides on the MMIWGT2S crisis provided a model and inspiration for this guide.

Land Acknowledgement

We would like to recognize that the University of Denver and the greater city of Denver reside within the traditional territories of Hinonoeino (Arapaho), Tsitsista (Cheyenne), and Nunt'zi (Ute). We recognize the descendant communities of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana, the Northern Arapaho Tribe of Wyoming, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. We also acknowledge that over 40 different Indigenous nations continue to be in relation with the lands currently called Colorado (https://morgridge.du.edu/about/diversity-equity-inclusion/land-acknowledgement).

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Jenny Bowers
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Denver, CO 80208

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