Part 1 The Reality of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women: Stolen Voices

In this powerful first installment of a two-part conversation on Finding Your Voice, host Jason Carrasco sits down with Teyana Viscarra and Norm Sands from Way of the Sacred Mountain to explore the devastating reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).

This episode shines a light on the heartbreaking statistics, systemic failures, and generational trauma impacting Indigenous communities across North America. Together, they discuss why Indigenous women, men, girls, boys, and two spirit relatives face disproportionately high rates of violence, why so many cases go underreported or unsolved, and how awareness, advocacy, and community action are critical in creating change.

Through honest conversation and education, this episode invites listeners to move beyond headlines and truly understand the human impact behind the MMIW crisis. More than statistics, these are stories of daughters, mothers, sisters, families, and communities whose voices deserve to be heard.

This conversation is difficult, emotional, and deeply important. Our hope is that by bringing greater awareness to MMIW, we can help amplify Indigenous voices, honor those who have been lost, and encourage meaningful action and healing.

Topics discussed include:

•  The origins and meaning of the MMIW movement 
•  The alarming statistics surrounding violence against Indigenous women 
•  Why many cases receive little media attention 
•  Historical trauma and systemic barriers 
•  Advocacy, education, and community healing 
•  How listeners can support awareness and change 

Part Two will continue the conversation by focusing on healing, advocacy efforts, and the work being done through Way of the Sacred Mountain to support Indigenous communities and protect future generations.

Way of the Sacred Mountian 

You Tube Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGydeK4RmMw&t=5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdzO_oVT7v0

https://wayofthesacredmountain.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello, I'm Jason Carrasco, and welcome to Finding Your Voice. I'm a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist and a lifelong student of human resilience. For years, I've sat with people in some of their hardest moments, moments that have challenged their identity, their spirit, and sometimes their will to keep going. One thing I've learned is that human beings can survive the unthinkable. And with support, a person's pain can become great purpose. This podcast is a home for stories about mental health, human rights, and the courage it takes to move through darkness and toward healing. In these episodes, you'll hear from survivors, clinicians, and everyday people who are brave enough to speak honestly and bold enough to use their voice. You deserve hope, you deserve healing, and you deserve to be heard. Welcome to Finding Your Voice. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Finding Your Voice. I'm Jason Carrasco, licensed marriage family and child therapist, and thank you for being here with us today. Today we're talking about missing and murdered Indigenous women, often referred to as MMIW. This term speaks to a heartbreaking and ongoing crisis in which Indigenous women and girls experience violence, disappearance, and homicide at disproportionately high rates. For decades, many of these cases have gone underreported, underinvestigated, or overlooked due to systemic gaps in jurisdiction, funding, and media coverage. This isn't just about statistics, it's about entire communities that are carrying grief. So today we want to honor their names, want to honor their stories. I'm really honored to be here today with Tiana Viscara and Norm Sands, who partnered with one another in 2021 to create an Indigenous-led grassroots organization that's called Way of the Sacred Mountain. At Way of the Sacred Mountain, the primary focus of their work is bringing attention to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. This organization works to break the silence around the brutal truths of the past and the continuing injustices of the present. Through exhibitions and art activism, they raise awareness of critical issues that are impacting Indian country. Their exhibitions create safe spaces for reflection and community gathering, includes a call for healing through prayer, action, and remembrance. Tayana and Orm, would you both like to introduce yourselves?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I am Tayana Visquera. I want to honor my relatives and my people, Pito Tiwa Pueblo from New Mexico, Apache, and European. And I can't forget my great-grandfather Taruhumara out of the Copper Canyons of Chihuahua, Mexico. So honored to be southern and northern, indigenous, connected to the land. Grateful to be here today.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Hi, I'm Norm Sands, I'm Yaqui and Apache on my mom's side, and European and Spanish on my dad's. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

All right. And again, thank you both so much for being here. And to get started for this episode, would both of you maybe be willing to provide the audience with some of the statistics that are important in relationship to MMIW that you would like the audience to be aware of?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Well, so this is kind of MMIW 101 topic, or hopefully those that don't know this is even happening. So these statistics are pretty shocking and hope they motivate you to find out more about this ongoing genocide of our people. Native women are 2.5 times higher than any other nationality to be raped, sexually assaulted, 10 times more likely to be murdered than any other race. 84% of uh our women will experience some kind of violence in their lifetime, which is significantly higher than the national average. And I'd also like you to understand that 91% of that violence would be done by non-native men. So, you know, this is something that's been happening. I need you to understand since time immemorial, since first contact. It's heartbreaking. So some of these statistics should rattle you to your core. We make up less than some say 2% and some say 3% of the population of the United States, but our women make up 40% of the women's sex traffic in the United States. That's a horrific number that should be rattling us all. The heartbreaking thing about these statistics is they're probably even higher than what I just said, if you can imagine that. There's really no one keeping track. They keep track of our white relatives, our black relatives, and our Hispanic relatives, but but there is no federally database for indigenous women. They did start to do one, but then again, this administration just erased all that information this year.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Wow, that is horrifying information. Tayana, do you have anything to reflect on that as well?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, the MMIW crisis, it is still ongoing and is deeply rooted, not due to lack of awareness, but because of structural, legal, and data barriers. And existing data shows indigenous women experiencing homicide as the number one three cause of death. And what's tragic about that is we know that 40% of our homicides were women were raped or coerced. And we also know that 8% of those cases of our rape victims end in conviction. So only 8%, which is absolutely unthinkable in terms of how justice shows up for our people. I know that the MMIW database, 66% are murder cases, and one in three of our cases are under 18 years old. 37% experience police brutality, and 65% are foster care related.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Yeah, these numbers are absolutely heartbreaking. They're they're mind-blowing. I mean, and it's even hard to process, take it all in, as you know, I've I've seen some of the information before, some of my own reading and some of my own research, but to hear both of you lay all of this out together, it's a lot to process. And I just want to say ridiculous is that they're they've stopped keeping an accurate database of this.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Most states do not maintain a comprehensive official MMIW database. And the data used in the reporting where we draw our statistics come often come from the Urban Indian Health Institute, analysis of public records, and the national missing and unidentified person system, NAMAS inputs, and local tribal and advocacy groups tracking. This is why with our policies makers, we recognize that the true scale is greater than what existing data is able to capture. It's horrific that we can literally, we do have tracking where we're able to identify the top 10 states that are impacted, where there is more missing and murder cases that are being documented and at disproportionate, disproportionate risk levels. And that would be New Mexico and Washington, Arizona, Alaska, Montana, California, Nebraska, Utah, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. It's really important that we understand that the reason that this happens is because while we have reporting and classification issues all across all these states, misclassifying our race, ethnicity, incomplete data reporting, cases never entered into the national database means actual numbers are underestimated nationwide. In these places, too, one of the important things to understand is we do have urban hotspots while reservations in rural areas get much attention about our missing murdered Indigenous women cases, and rightly so, many of our cases occur in urban centers, you know, which underscore the role that cities play in the crisis. Really high rates of sexual violence, homicide, and rape and abduction are cities like Seattle and Albuquerque, Anchorage, Tucson, and Billings are among U.S. cities with the highest case counts. It's important that we listen to what the stats are saying, and yet we know that we are not just statistic, and reaching beyond that is really important to understanding why we need to understand the vast scope. The FBI and tribal law enforcement report that thousands of American Indian and Alaska Natives people are entered as missing each year, with a significant portion representing women and girls. And recent public reporting indicates in 2024, which this is really important because our greatest influx of statistics were formed a decade ago, and our movement has evolved so much. But in 2024 alone, there were over 10,000 missing cases and well over 1,500 still active by the end of that year. So this undercounts the true crisis because of misclassification and under-reporting. I want to add that when I mentioned the 2016, the National Crime Information Center, the NCIC, listed 5,712 missing Indigenous women girls, yet only 116 appeared in the DOJ's federal database, NAMAS. So investigations and reporting also often failed to include tribal affiliation, actual racial classification of a full case of details, meaning their disappearances are not trapped. And so this is another problem. And so by not having a centralized yearly public total existing, it really creates a lot of gaps in how we're able to come to a resolve. And studies show violence and homicide rates remain consistently high with only a modest official downward trends as this entire decade of tracking data here in the United States has occurred.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Yeah, so what I'm hearing then is not only numbers that are staggering in terms of what's happening to the Native American community and the Indigenous people, but then as you're emphasizing and you're clearly laying out factually is that, like we've mentioned, underreported, not accurate, which seems so unfair to a people putting it.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

A huge injustice is the important role reports like the Not Invisible at Commission, and both Norm and I attended the Not Invisible at Commission hearings in our Euroc territory for California. Is that that final report came out documenting about eight different tribes that were experiencing high volumes of missing murdered indigenous cases and the families' stories being reported? And this was all to collect information and also understand the depth and the stories behind it, centralizing families' voices. And as Norm mentioned earlier, that was removed from the government website. So it's undermining transparency and continuity, which then disrupts the ability to track and see where we're going.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

So for listeners who may be hearing about MMIW for the first time, what do you want them to understand that the statistics alone just can't capture?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Well, statistics tell us how many, and that's important. But a deeper understanding asks, it asks the hard questions, like why are indigenous women uniquely targeted?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

How does colonial power continue to structure vulnerabilities for us? And most importantly, what does justice even look like according to like indigenous communities, centering their voice, centering indigenous people? Those are the questions that really matter. By framing what stats really tell us on a deeper level, we can also understand that you know the MMIW crisis is ongoing and it's deeply rooted. And it's not due to lack of awareness, but because of structural, legal, and data barriers. And so existing data shows indigenous women face higher rates of disappearance, violence and homicide, more than the national average. We know that we hear it over and over, year after year, conference after conference, legislative meetings and rallies and marches. This is the theme. And so, in saying that, we know that the data has kind of gotten stuck in a time warp of the United Indian Health Institute, the NAMUS database, the DOJ not inputting data into the full data into their database. And so with that, by taking a deeper dive and doing some research, you know, we've come to learn that that there are some current stats out there that are important to consider and that still parallel and coincide with the stats of the past that already are still standing. And one of the stats that was really alarming to me was that you know, we know violence and risk plays out in one in three indigenous women who may be murdered or die and then under suspicious circumstances before the age of 65. And I'm like, whoa, well, I'm 64, right? And so that gets my mind thinking. But what gets me thinking more is how often we have our our women, our relatives, our people, we're lucky if we can get them to say that they were murdered or went missing under suspicious circumstances because oftentimes they say, oh, there's no foul play here, when it's clearly evidence that there's been a beating, there's been strangulation, there's been, you know, there's body markings, there's been more than just what they often classify our people in the in these circumstances as either, you know, and jump to these conclusions, suicide, overdose, hypothermia. And the reason why they want to say no foul plan, this is really important because unless a case is deemed and classified as a homicide by the coroner's office, right, by the medical examiner, unless that happens, then it's case closed. Then there is no further investigative justice, there's no resources put towards that case, there's no more searches, there's no more, there's no more trying to dig deeper and find out to get to the bottom of it for there to be any justice for the families. And this is heartbreaking. And often our families, along with the community and the grassroots advocates organizations and people that come together to continue the fight tirelessly. That is that's how eventually justice is uh is often conclusive because it's not it's not the institutions that are gonna do it. They're not gonna hand it to you. You gotta fight tooth and nail.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Which must be emotionally draining for people that they have to be the ones on top of grieving or worrying or being scared about their missing, they have to be the ones to take charge of this work because they aren't getting the backing of any justice type bodies to get that help. So how devastating that is for a for a community to have to experience.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Well, it's it's heartbreaking, right? Because that's their job, but they shirk the butt, they pass, right? And they they have all these ways to to make it not a case, not a not a crime, and that way they can sweep it under the rug very easily. Yeah. You know, uh we were talking about these statistics too, you know, and I wanted to say that violence against Indian women often include domestic abuse histories prior to disappearance or murder, which is, you know, a lot of the cases have to do with domestic violence, and that's usually when they do try to leave, is when the homicide or the stopping of that occurs, you know, if I can't have you, no one will mentality.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Yeah, and that in a lot of relate and this is in every relationship, but often one of the things known about domestic violence, intimate partner violence, if that's what's going on experiencing, is that violence is only gonna escalate in those types of relationships that as it continues. And I'm I'm not saying it's always gonna result in death, but usually that domestic violence is happening before that takes it.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

It's a it's it's a precursor to it's not gonna get any better. You know, we had a case in San Francisco, it's it's a case in point that's really pertinent to what we're we're talking about right here, right now, is the ex-boyfriend called 911 and reported that his girlfriend had hung herself, committed suicide. They came out, they seen a shoelace tied around her neck in the closet, they cut her down. She actually lived for four days, and in those four days told the story herself that you know she was beaten from bruised from you know, head to toe, plumps of hair pulled out. It was obvious, but she died of asphyxiation after those four days, and and they ruled it a suicide case closed. The mother had proven that it wasn't a shoelace, ligature marks didn't match. Uh it was it was her key lanyard. She was gonna leave. And it was he used her key lanyard, so there's still no justice. It's still classified that, and he's still walking free. Those are the things we need to change. We need a thorough investigation, we need to not take people's words for what's happened. You know, there is no justice, right? There's there's no bringing her back, but we need accountability. I think that's the most important accountability.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And that that leads into the statistic that's alarming that only 6% of MMIW cases result in arrest. And that's due to just what Norm is talking about. It's with all of this evidence, often calling foul play, not having agencies not willing to do the work, and for the reasons that are you know rooted in systemic racism and devaluing the lives of indigenous women, and is it all plays out in what they deem as a priority case to focus on. Will this case get any media attention? Where are they going to put their resources? And this is why there's such a heavy discriminatory impact in this missing and murdered indigenous women's reality. And it's also responsible why there's when a family reports their daughter or their son, their niece or their nephew or mother gone missing, we have way more the delayed responses by law enforcement is just unthinkable. Everything's put off. And then the uh the other thing is 50% of the cases may never be officially reported due to law enforcement mistrust of institutions. That's the statistics on that, we know that to be true, but I never knew that there would be a 50% of the cases may officially never be reported. So under-reporting, as we spoke about, is really problematic.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

We we know why, because we see it every day. You know, the families are vilified, right? It's the victim is vilified as it being their own their fault. They brought this on, they they had it coming somehow. And even criminalizing you as report, you know, reporting it. What's your name? Let me see your ID, you know, intimidation to try and get you to not, you know, Tiana's experience that firsthand, uh, trying to fight for some families. The one that just rocks me to my core is indigenous women, vastly uh overrepresented in human. Trafficking data. Over 50% of the trafficking victims are indigenous women. You know, we make up we make up less than 3% of the population. You know, so that should be shaking everybody. And what it comes down to, to me, my thoughts is 537 years of dehumanization. You know, we don't matter. We're we're less than human. And that's what we need to remember is our humanity. I can't stress that enough. These are all of our brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews, and mothers and fathers that are that are indigenous going missing. They're our relatives, and we need to care for them and never forget. I did mention that one case earlier in San Francisco, and I want to say her name. I would love your listeners to look her up and follow that case and put pressure on that law enforcement agency, her Jessica Alva. Jessica Alva, Jessica Alva, a beautiful sister raising six beautiful children and going back, finding her way and teaching them their way. You know, I've marched with her in those streets. She's fought for MMIW, and she had our shawl up on her living room wall. You know, we just never know.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

Where is she from, Norm? Jessica?

SPEAKER_02 23:02

She was up in the Bay Area up in San Francisco and was murdered there. We we did all we could. Her mother was we we just lost her also recently. But she was, you know, again, the family has to be the investigator, the searcher, the the reporter. You know, they they don't get no breaks because the people supposed to be doing those jobs aren't doing them for us. And she was uh relentless. She was able to get the DA and the medical examiner excused from their positions there, but then COVID hit. So a lot of things happening, you know. But once they rule something to me, it's super hard. Almost like if you're innocent and you go to prison, you know, it's super hard to get you out sometimes. You know, they don't they don't want to claim that mistake they made. And that's what we need to hold them accountable is to their mistakes and make them do better. Yeah, accountability.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah, we know it's not an isolated public safety issue. We've gotten into through the evolution and maturity of I guess what we would call today missing murdered indigenous women's movement. You know, which for us is so hard because hard to fathom having a movement based on murder, basically genocide. So we've we have compartmentalized what's important, where we need to focus. Everyone has their scope and scale of where, you know, some people are calling this a public safety issue, some people are calling this a criminal issue, some people are, we know that this is a systemic issue tied to social inequities, and it's filled with deep complexities and it's deeply rooted in historical trauma. Statistics, you know, they animize and and then stories humanize. By listening to the stories, you know, we compelled to enter into this not as something we see as apart from ourselves that we cannot deny and enter into in a prayerful manner. And then we're not witnesses as a standby, but that we enter into what Norm and I call this prayer, you know, by listening to our family's stories, there they become testimonies. And then from that is shaped like community-led questions, inquiries about the direction that we need to go and how their needs are being met. And it gives us a guidance and understanding about how to move forward and carry this prayer forward, you know. And then we have we have our indigenous women, girls, two spirit and men and boys, and we have our our advocates, you know, we're advocating for them, but they also themselves, in terms of from the families, become advocates. And Norm and I always say, you know, we we were compelled and moved into this prayer because the dream and the hope was to alleviate families from the from the struggle and from the suffering of having to do the heavy lifting on the front line with just having their voices heard, something as simple as that, and creating the visibility and bringing attention and a spotlight to this crisis. This is why we continue and where we find our strength today.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

Yeah, and thank you for that that strength that that you both carry. All those out there that are involved with trying to help, trying to educate, trying to empower, you know, and and so many other different things. Somebody that has the the strength to do this kind of kind of work.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

I'm not sure if you're familiar with New Mexico, where yeah, the family had reached out, Amber alert out, but they wouldn't because she was native. And then they got that new law passed to get the which I I find really turquoise alert. Which I find really upsetting to me is because there shouldn't be a separation. Yeah. We we know racism is alive and well, so now feather alert, somebody might not respond to it if they have that heart, right? To to not care. We have feather alert here in California. We have different names for them in different states, right? But our children still do not go, native children still do not go on the amber alert. What's their reasoning? Well, we're only sovereign when when when they've they want us to be, right? So I think they're trying to create that separation unless they don't want to create the separation. For me, any child should be any child should be on the amber alert. So just put out the car, put out the circumstances, and put out the the information. I find it scary that they separate because that you know it's not about separating, right? It's about taking care of our children. That's what an amber alert's about. It was about taking care of children.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

And and all of our children are human. So why why the distinction? I don't I don't think it it matters, it makes sense to me. It doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

The turquoise alert was brought about because of Emily Pike. And so it's like a double-edged sword because the reason why they're trying to make a distinction, it's the same way why it's important when they do a classification of death, that they get it right for our people, that what what if they're have a tribal affiliation, if they're reservation or non-reservation. And so what this means is by giving it the distinction, the dream for I think our people is that it's a priority because of the crisis of missing murdered indigenous women, they're trying to say this is really important. And they're also trying to say, you can't neglect this because we already are in crisis over it. You know, it didn't.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Well, what I'm what I'm saying though is I think it's beautiful. I'll take anything. All I want them to do is put that license plate number and that information on those electronic billboards on the freeway, right? Just so people can do. My point is it's just a double-edged sword. If there are racist people in this community that don't care about indigenous people, and we know there are some in in a lot of these places all around the country that really don't give a shit about native people. I just think it should say a child is missing. This is the car, and this is where they're headed, this is where they were headed last.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

That's that's my that's my whole point right there. I I don't it's it's about humanity again. Everything's about humanity, you know, caring that this is a child. And and I don't care if it's white, black, brown, or or red.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Well, it's just like what I feel today when we see so many case after case. I'm like, what's going on? I can't sleep at night. It's it's every day there's a new case, a new face. I can't keep it up with remembering their names, reaching out to families. It's overwhelming. And I feel that it's the same thing by bringing awareness to it and shining a light on it and letting it be known about the complexities of jurisdiction issues and not being able to be prosecuted on reservation lands, then it's almost as if we're putting a target on our own back to get through to the other side to get justice. So it's like we have to run through this chute that's on fire to get to justice. And it shouldn't be that way, but it is, and it's what Norm is saying. It's the same thing. We want an alert to show the distinction because we have a crisis, but at the same time, then that distinction alerts the perpetrators, whether they're racist, people that don't care, or whether it's an actual perpetrator that we need to be brought to justice, who is literally getting away with murder because now he knows all the loopholes. And most criminals, that's what they're looking for, right? They're looking for the loopholes, ways that they can get around and in and up and over and get over on the system so that they can get away with the crimes that they commit.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

And the heartbreaking thing about that is most perpetrators know if they snag that little light girl out the street, they're gonna get the dogs and the helicopters and media and everything on them. And they absolutely know that if they snag that little native girl, they're probably gonna get away with it. 85% chance of getting away with it, you know, and that's that's what we need to change. Touching on what Tanner was saying, just so you understand, this amber alert, feather alert, they're not in all, they're not in every state. It takes to actually like to die for us to get one in that state. And and that's too that costs too much.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Yeah, it shouldn't have to cost lives to to get an alert.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

It should be proactive instead of reactive.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Right. It shouldn't have to, we should be having it should be in every state right now, but right, we have a feather alert in California, we have a turquoise alert in New Mexico, we have a feather alert, you know, and each one of those was was because of a life.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

The offenders, they're aware of these enforcement gaps, and this all leads to who's gonna take the case, federal or state authorities. Many cases get declined, deprioritized, and these cases just fall right through the cracks. The ones that don't are when, through the words of one of my most favorite humans on the planet, Yolanda Frazier, is that when they were doing their work, advocacy work for her granddaughter, Kisseristops Pretty places, is that what they found where they got the most impact in seeing change occur is when they shake it up in the grassroots level. And it's because that puts public pressure and it's puts such a loud spotlight that those elected officials, it's calling them out that they are not doing their jobs. And sadly, a lot of you know, people in these positions of power, they have self-interest, they just want, they're looking for re-election and to align themselves with issues that are going to make them be seen in a good light and make sure that they're doing the right thing by where there is pressure. If there's no pressure, these things will just go under the radar and they won't be, there will be no seeking of justice for the people.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Well, it's a sad world we live in, right? Where we have to embarrass somebody, shame them into doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, and instead of it being initiated by a good heart and you know, integrity and a person of conviction and moral standing, we have we've lost our way. Things have to be, those things have to be elevated back to a standard that in it, it doesn't just happen in our border towns off the res, it's happening in our tribal communities as well. We hear our people speaking out about some of the corruptions that are seeping into our tribal councils and how we are at great risk when our leaders off the res, on the res are taking on the oppressive attributes of the oppressor instead of standing through the ways and the lifeways and the practices of our people. That means being for the people. But I know that we're not powerless, and we and I know we're gonna get into some of the resolve and the work that tremendous people have committed their lives to see the violence against Native women and the organizations that have their hand in this work and the tribal sovereign nations that have the hand their hand in this work in making sure that this is not reduced to an epidemic, but that is seen as a crisis of genocide occurring in real time in our lives.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Yeah, and I I I think we've already talked to this a little bit, but I I I even want to give it a little bit more kind of value because I think it's so important. How widespread is this issue in the indigenous community? What are your thoughts on how widespread it is?

SPEAKER_00 34:54

The crisis is not a marginal issue. It's widespread and disproportionate across many Indigenous communities in North America. And and we have to recognize even globally, the numbers and rates they reveal patterns of violence and disappearance far beyond what statistics alone can even capture. It's not limited to one country. Although most public attention focuses on the US and Canada, similar patterns of violence are reported amongst indigenous populations in other parts of the world, including indigenous women in Australia are overrepresented in homicidal statistics relative to their population. The way that our women are brutalized and murdered over there is unthinkable, that they're just discarded in the street. Think about our relatives in the Amazon and Guatemala, Cubano, and all of the places in America, especially, and especially anywhere where we have seen the oppressive hand of colonialism take over that territory. There is MMIW happening in those places.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

Yeah, it's a global issue, even like you're saying. Norm, you're gonna you gonna say something to that as well?

SPEAKER_02 36:25

A lot of this is is about eraser, getting rid of the evidence, taking away your voice of their sins, right? This country's sins. The the genocide is ongoing. It's it's happening today. You know, they always say get over it. It was in the past. How do you get over something that's never ended? It's alive and well in this country and and throughout the world. And what it's gonna take is all of us coming together and remembering our humanity, you know, uh taking care of each other. That colonial mindset of Dali, Dolly, every man for himself is is just that. It's a divide and conquer tactic that we need to overcome and remember that you're my brother and she's my sister, and and and we're here to take care of each other, protect the village.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

The real scale is likely larger than any stat can reflect. So this is how widespread it is, and I know that we're gonna get also into how deep it goes, and being brave enough to go into the depths and really discover what is at the root and expose that because that is part of the problem, is the intention is to silence. It's why we have the red handprint, it's why we have the red dresses, it's why we have the red teepee, it's why we have movements going across the nation on in rallies and vigils and prayer circles at sundance, at powwows. We have to make ourselves visible. It is why we wear red, it is to let them know that we will not forget that we will continue to be visible. We know that visibility is not going to see this to an end, but visibility exposes the truth, and then we become our own witness to tell the true story of a history that society is trying to silence. They don't want this story to be come out, they don't want the truth to be exposed.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Talk about, please, the issue of under-re-reporting. Why have so many of these cases gone underreported or overlooked, in both of your opinion?

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Well, a lot of it has to do with distrust, right? Of the authorities. There, Tiana could probably tell you a story about about a family in North Dakota that got a hold of us and even how the the police made her feel, uh, just to inquire. I don't know if you want to touch on that, Tiana, a little bit, but a beautiful outcome, but a heartbreaking story to me. The family waited two years of not knowing.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

That just thinking about that is this is common amongst cases. This is common amongst our relations with family. If we are able to be in a place to be of help, and they reach out and we just do whatever we can, whether it's getting a poster up or whether it's actually going to put their name as a missing person in the data, because the family is being given the runaround. The runaround is you're getting past, it's very going through the bureaucracy of this department and that department. And I know we're gonna get to this later, but it it ends up being a jurisdiction issue where who's gonna pick up the ball, who's gonna take responsibility, who's gonna have an obligation to do the paperwork, to do the footwork, to maybe put funds towards this. You have these departments in law enforcement that do, it seems like they don't want to do their job at all whenever it's concerning a native person, unlikely a person of color as well. And so, yeah, I have stood there in Santa Monica and literally fought with everything inside of me to get a sister's name put in the database with the permission and consent of the family to represent them in such a way, and the way that I was met with intimidation and bullying, and wanted to see my eyedines, wanted to find out where I live, wanted to see my social security guard. I was like, what the heck? So it could be very intimidating, and this is what we find that most of our families are experiencing extreme dismissal, intimidation, um, not getting back to them. All of those things play a factor in victim blaming.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Victim blaming is a big one.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Tremendous victim blaming. So we what we're looking at basically why it goes, why these cases go underreported and are over.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

I I I just wanted to say this before you said that. Because of this little four foot one, 95-pound wet warrior right here, uh, they did do their job. It took them, I think, a day and a half to punch in their little computer keyboard and and find her.

SPEAKER_03 41:27

Wow, and that little four four foot one you're talking about, Tayana here.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

I I assume guys, I'm 5'2 and 100 pounds. And I don't know, I I think when you're talking about being entrusted with a fam by a family to step into their story and be willing to it, it's it isn't about how big you are or how small you are, or even who you are, your status in life. It really just the determination comes from knowing that the suffering, the cruelty, the denial of justice for these families, they and I don't see them as separate from myself. The minute we start to share about someone missing or finding missing murdered someone murdered's remains, this family is our family. This is the way that we carry ourselves in this prayer, and that we know it's our rightful responsibility as human beings to trust Creator and be determined and relentless until we're able to get something done. And we we wouldn't want to return to them in any other way. We're not perfect human beings, but we are deeply passionate about making sure that if we can advocate for a family who is grieving, because when you're in that state and you're looking for a loved one and you're you're feeling powerless and you're feeling desperate and you're you're hurting, there you it's really hard to step into that role where you have to start. And you know, this is all rooted in historical dehumanization and racism, as Norm was saying, you know, where colonial policies in in our country systematically have devalued indigenous lives, you know, and it all plays into the boarding residential school system, forced relocation, cultural suppression, you know, has created long lasting trauma and distrust with these institutions. So the the legacy of why this is so wide underreported and overlooked, it's you know, it's uh contributed to stereotyping indigenous women and victim blaming uh. As Norm was mentioning, and lower lowering the urgency in their investigations. You know, it's the urgency that is really, really important because we have a very small window when someone goes missing to be able to get to them soon so that we can prevent a fatality so that someone being abducted doesn't lead to a homicide. So when victims are not treated as like the ideal victim, the stigma attached to who our Native women are and our Native men are, on who our people are, especially our two spirit relatives, in media and in law enforcement narratives, their case in their cases, our cases receive less attention. We're not a priority.

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Yeah, and I just I just want to mention the respect I have for the fight, the determination, and the will that that both of you have for this work. And I feel like I need to mention Norm and Tiana are are doing this work on top of their regular jobs. It is very self-sacrificing work, what they are doing, the the time invested, the traveling, the exhibitions, a lot of stuff that we'll talk about later on in the next episode. So we'll go into all of that. You'll hear about all the work they do. Again, the the voice that you have and just the sheer passion and beauty is is pretty mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Well, do it. I thank you for that. But you know, doing nothing once you know truth is not an option. And what what drives me is the stories of these families. It's unfathomable what they're dealing with every day. So what we do is is nothing. It's you know, it's what we can.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Even going beyond stigma and targets on our back, this is a core pattern. You know, it's a colonial system that devalues indigenous people and it has legal loopholes that shield our offenders, you know, it has economic forces that resource abstraction and trafficking networks, and it's got chronic underfunding of Indigenous services. And of course, more than anything, it has media and institutional bias. So it completely, we're lucky if we can get in media at all. I mean, Norm mentioned the Gabby Petito case, but it's it's case after case after case. How did Cole brings plenty, you know, a rising indigenous star in Hollywood? How did his death and his him going missing not have that kind of media attention so we could find him? How is it that we have story after story after story where you've got cases like Misty Upham and again someone that was at the Golden Globes there making her way up through the ranks of the of Hollywood? And she was, you know, more in the way that Hollywood has racistly depicted our people through the lens of John Wayne over historically creating tremendous racist stereotypes for our people. And so, how is it that we did not have on February 14th in the media, MMIW, the march that took place recently with 10,000 people in the march? How is this not being shown?

SPEAKER_03 47:39

There are so many, you know, and I think we're doing the best we can to keep it simple, but it's just that there's so many layers to each question.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Yeah, this isn't just a criminal issue, it's a structural issue.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

Yeah, and we're the next question that that I want to get into is something else that's extremely complicated and another big, big area. But I want to try to keep it as simple as we can for people who don't know anything about jurisdiction when it comes to MMIW. What do you think is kind of the simplest explanation? I know this is really hard and challenging, in very, very simple terms. How can you talk about why jurisdiction is an issue and why it makes investigations harder?

SPEAKER_00 48:31

Well, it's a convoluted issue, and that's what makes it complex. There's jurisdiction confusion, there's jurisdiction gaps, jurisdictional gaps. Tribal nations historically lacked authority to prosecute non-native offenders on tribal lands, and this created impunity. Especially if the crime happens on the reservation, then the tribal courts are their hands are tied to be able to prosecute non-native criminals, perpetrators on tribal lands. So oftentimes when a crime happens, they're like, Well, whose jurisdiction was it on? Where did it happen? But but they started over here and it ended up in this jurisdiction. So the jurisdiction confusion is a complex issue between tribal police, state, provincial authorities, federal agencies, and you know, these are limitations that are stemming from the Major Crimes Act and the Indian Civil Rights Act, and historically restricted tribal courts' ability to prosecute certain crimes. And it delays investigations. Remember, we talked about this window.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

I I would like to add, you know, it's for instance, in 2024, tribes were granted the ability to try non-native men for there must be violence.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Reauthorization of the Bawa Act.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

Yes, but they couldn't they couldn't try them for rape or anything like that. Anything anything other than domestic violence, which is ridiculous, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:06

Awful, yeah, awful.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

Um, and and you gotta remember Olifant is a ruling that was made in the 1800s, you know, to protect bounties were going out when for native people, right? Five cents a scalp and five dollars a year, you know, and and less for women and children. You know, this is just so they could get away with stuff and not be prosecuted for it, and and to uphold it. And I think I think they upheld it in 1978 to keep that on the books, which doesn't make sense to me. We're it in 1978, you know, we got our freedom of religion where we were for the first time could pray the way we do. We could hold our ceremonies and be indigenous people out in public. And for them to to still have that archaic lie to uphold it was another slap in the face, you know, and another degradation, right? Another less than human.

SPEAKER_03 51:53

I'm still kind of blown away that you said just in 2024 there was going to be prosecution of non-native men.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Tribal courts were were given that from VAWA to to try non-native men for uh domestic violence only, though, not not rape. They they can still rape on native land and and not be prosecuted for it. They can still kill and all the way up. They they can it's and all that's impunity. The target, right? It's protection of non-native men in the in the 20th century. Unbelievable. That's how it is.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, tribal sovereignty creates a more fragmented legal structure and the jurisdiction depends on it. So whether the crime occurred on tribal land, whether the victim was native, whether the offender is native, federal declination rates historically left many cases unprosecuted, and data collection has been inconsistent across all of the agencies because of this incongruency with jurisdiction. And jurisdiction is also important because you know it brings in the what we haven't talked about yet, which is the extraction industries and the man camps. So, what are man camps? Large oil, gas, mining, and pipeline projects, often bringing temporary, mostly male workforce into nearby tribal lands. And these workforce camps, sometimes called man camps, have been linked by advocates and some studies to spike violence because they're right there on the border town near reservations. And so trafficking and sexual assault in nearby indigenous communities exist as at high rates because of this. And this is more complex in terms of that, what creates the complexity of the jurisdiction issue. It's horrific.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

And so it's it's also it's also one of the major contributors contributors to MMIW. The raping of our mother earth and the raping of our women go hand in hand in this colonized mindset of the United States. So I I think it's important to understand that it's it's not by accident, right? That these places are put right next to reservations. It's horrific.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

I wanted to add that offenders, they're they're aware of the enforcement gaps. They're aware of these rulings, and they know that many cases will be declined or deprioritized, and they know because of this olifant that cases are often deferred to be federal or to the federal or state authorities because they can't be tried there, right? On tribal land. So the feds or the state has to take the case. And when you're talking about reservations, it has to become a federal case. And in that, in that instance, it's really oftentimes the difficulty that creates on the on the people that have been offended, whether it was a murder or a rape, this is why we go back again to that under reporting, because they know that about 50, more than 51% of your prosecutors, they don't want to take the case because prosecutors, they only want to take cases that they know that they're gonna win. And so oftentimes they don't take these cases, and oftentimes there's underreporting because the women know this also, the lack of trust, but also how far they have to travel. It creates tremendous hardship for people to have to leave the reservation and go to a federal court to have their case heard. And so these this is why I say this jurisdictional quagmire that happens creates complete complications that lets that perpetrator know they can get away with murder. Yeah, yeah, and they know like why this is happening.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

They know, like you said, people aren't gonna want to take these cases either because there's so much confusion, nothing is clear, there's so many complications. I mean, nobody's on the same page, there's gaps in communication everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:13

I'd also like to touch on the fact that even when it is handed down from tribal to local or or state, you know, a lot of these towns, you know, I I can tell you here in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Montana. I mean, we can go on and on. You know, you have a lot of these little pockets of good old boys, right? Where even I can name several cases where in some of the disappearances and and it being overlooked and swept under the rug and covered up. We have towns where the the mayor is related to the mortuary mortician, to the sheriff, to, you know, they're all a family-owned town, right? Where they can just do what they want and then dehumanize our people. Uh, and and that needs to change also. Jurisdiction for me is just passing the buck. It's it's geared specifically, made up that way, so they don't have to look. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

I really appreciate the work that Secretary Deb Holland did with creating the Not Invisible Act in 2020. You know, it's I want to bring these things up because it's important to understand that over this decade there's been tremendous, fierce, powerful, powerful in the sense of just strong Native women that have stepped in and created like a cross-jurisdictional advisory committee, right? Which it expanded tribal authority under the Violence Against Women Act, which is what what Norman and I were talking about, the VAWA. And then it's also important to consider the work that Roof Buffalo has done on the Savannas Act in 2020 to improve data collection and coordination across different agencies. These acts are bills that have passed through tremendous hard work and tireless energy to see some form of justice come into play. But but what we what we see is challenges still remain in the funding gaps and limited tribal infrastructure and ongoing data inconsistencies. But more than that, it's just laws on the books aren't going to be the only answer for us, you know. And that's one thing we know that despite all of the steps that we're taking through legislation to make things shift and change, we still have a long way to go because we just keep seeing case after case after case.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

Well, I would like to I would like to add that laws on the books alone, we we need to put teeth into them, right? Because we still have some state, local, and federal agencies just don't care and they don't uphold those laws, you know, and they pass them off too much.

SPEAKER_03 58:59

Yeah, I mean, there's so much, I think, more that can be again, jurisdiction is it's so complex when you get into it, and it is such an underlying issue. I mean, there could be like three or four shows on on jurisdiction. At the same time, you know, I want to be mindful of of our time. What do you think people often misunderstand about this crisis? I know that's a pretty heavy question. I think you two have have maybe some good thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

I think uh it's really important for us to know that awareness means the problem is being solved. And public awareness has grown significantly in recent years. We all know, but structural reform takes sustained investment and policy change, and expanding tribal jurisdiction, as we just talked about, and funding paretti and prevention infrastructure remains an ongoing challenge. And also data, data, data. Yes. And so, yeah, we have a jurisdictional fragmentation and service gaps, which is a big problem. Another core misunderstanding is the misconception in viewing MMIW as an isolated tragedy rather than a systemic pattern. So at its core, the crisis reflects historic erosion of our indigenous sovereignty and institutional bias, chronic underfunding. You know, we we are chronically underfunded, and that's intentional. And the economic pressures on indigenous lands. These are all these are all things that are, you know, misunderstandings. The misunderstanding that it's just a crime problem. This one really gets to me because the reality is the crisis is not simply about, you know, it's rooted in, it's not just about singular acts of violence, as I just said, but it's rooted in structural conditions shaped by colonial policy. That's really important. That economic marginalization is intentional. That is systemic oppression, poverty seized upon a people to create all kinds of social maladies that disempower a people to operate in the fullness and thrive in who they are, in their full sovereignty. That is really important. So, you know, these violence are related to the legal fragmentation and the chronic underinvestigation, the lack of investigative justice and the housing and healthcare disparities that occur with our people. There is, I can't remember the exact percentage, but predominantly many of our missing and murdered indigenous people are underhoused and facing housing crisis, you know, and they're unhomed. And that leads to all kinds of vulnerabilities and measures that people take to survive. And historical disruption of governance and family systems through the Indian boarding school and how that fractured and created so much internal oppression and also historical trauma in the sense of we have ancestral trauma that our people are having to overcome. So focusing only on individual perpetrators misses the systemic context that allows these patterns to persist. It has to be seen as a vast scope. And we have to understand the magnitude of it. And this is why Norm and I say, what do we say, Norm? It's gonna take all of us, it's gonna take everyone. And Norm and I, in the in the way that we show up, we aren't in there are people that are doing tremendous things like assembly James Ramos, Assemblyman James Ramos here in California. We have people that are uh Ruth Buffalo, as I mentioned, we have people that are doing tremendous work on just sexual assault, just on human trafficking. And each one is connected, is intersected into the crisis of missing murdered indigenous women. And we are very grassroots and we are very, we we tell a story. We're we our approach is very much through the storytelling of visibility and also our connection with the families and the way that we practice ceremony. I would say that through this journey, we have taken a very prayerful, ceremonial way that we enter this prayer as we see it is extreme, it is sacred. This prayer is sacred, and it's something that because the crisis is so vast and monumental, and we we know that we have to come to the creator in prayer and pray that if we just do what we can do within our full capacity with full heart, that we somehow in this story of MMIW, that we are gonna see the cre the power of the creator break in and we are going to see restorative justice rise for our people. And and the other thing is it doesn't only affect women. This is another one that I just can't leave out. While indigenous women and girls have been the primary focus, obviously, since since we began, because there of the sexual violence, the gender-based violence that happens against women. But we know that indigenous men are also disproportionately targeted and are two-spirit people and also are also victimized at extremely high rates. And many advocates now use broader terms. We talked about this at another point, like M M I W G IIS or M M I P to reflect the full scope of harm. But we like to say now that these, all these relatives in whatever capacity and whatever face of violence and harm came against them to take them far too soon from us, is that these are our warriors. They are our warriors, and we want to remember them in that way.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

And we never want to forget our women though. So MMIW is for missing and murdered indigenous warriors. Our women are warriors, our men are warriors, our children, our boys and our girls, our elders, our two spirit relatives, and we'll never forget any of them, and we'll fight until this ends. We need to bring it to an end. I think I don't know if it's a misconception or a misunderstanding, but I don't understand. It's my misunderstanding is how this could. Still be happening today. And I understand where the world is right now. It's separate, right? Divide and conquer. It's dividing us all. We need to remember our humanity. We need to we need to come together and take care of each other, uh, all people, all races, all human beings. And we need to, like Tiana was saying, it's going to take 8 billion of us to end this. We all, it's a mindset. We're all worthy. We're we're all worthy to have a happy, healthy life, a good life. We all need that chance to prosper.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Yeah, and I love just going back real quick to what Tiana said. I love, you know, MMIW being also missing and murdered indigenous warriors. I think that's a great way to take a look at it and to honor, again, everybody that's being impacted, not just one, because yes, it started with the woman and it'll always be about the woman. But like you said, there are now a lot more knowledge about the other genders that are being impacted as well, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:58

So do a shout out for MMIW, Mr. Emmerged Indigenous Warriors. Shout out our brother.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

Oh, Joe brings plenty. We love you, brother. I want to just continue a few more points with the misunderstanding because these misconceptions sometimes shift the blame, reshape the narrative onto indigenous communities themselves, obscuring jurisdictional and legal realities. And it's really important that we hold the narrative as truth and not allow the these stories to a lot of people think, well, it's mainly community violence. You know, that's a misconception that, you know, a substantial portion of violent crimes against indigenous women are committed by non-Indigenous offenders. As Norm said earlier in the stats, 91%. And, you know, for decades, legal precedents such as the Olifant limited tribal authority to prosecute non-native perpetrators contributing to these enforcement gaps. And also, you know, there's this thought that most of these case and happen cases happen in remote areas. And this is really important because we need to heal the bridge between our urban and our reservation relatives, understanding that although rural reservations and northern highways receive media attention, a significant portion of cases happen and occur in our cities. And many Indigenous people now live in urban areas. 70% really, when you think about it, due to relocation and the Termination Act. We've got jurisdiction may be unclear in those spaces, and tribal support networks are less accessible for urban territory relatives, urban relatives, you know, dating tracker there, tracking can be inconsistent there. So the crisis is not exclusively rural. And also the other one that's a stigma that is attached to like the families making them sound irresponsible, like they don't report right away. That is the farthest thing from the truth, from everything we've ever heard, every story ever told from hundreds of families' testimonies that we have sat, cried with, listened to, and heard. And we know that families frequently reported, they report immediately, but reports are often they're dismissed, they're classified, they're classified as runaways, they're misrecorded racially, they're not entered into the national database. As Norm told this story earlier with our South Dakota relative, how we had to fight to get them into the NAMUS database. So this breeds upon, uh breeds about a historical mistrust of authorities. And that also plays out a role. If ever someone doesn't report, it's because there's always been, we always know what we're gonna get when we do that. And so oftentimes families take it upon themselves to create the searches, call in community. It is it is the families themselves that do the footwork and the investigation and put all of the pieces together. And it's a lot of work to try and find a missing loved one. So institutional response failures are well documented, including in the findings from the national inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women girls, that report that I have here sitting on my desk. So we have the evidence, and we know that in these reports it's already documented that these are the reasons. And so it's important, and I'm thank you so much for asking that question, you know, that you know, the historic erosion of indigenous sovereignty and uh in this crisis, and it is going to be the very thing that brings us to a resolve, we believe. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:08

Thank you.

unknown 1:11:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:09

Yeah, no, that was that was powerful because that that is a misconception that I I do want everyone to understand. And put yourself in these shoes. These families are the reporters, they are the searchers, they're the recoverers. They're there's families who have found their own children. And no one, no one should be have to do that, right? No, no one should, but nobody else is doing it. So they these families do it all. We need to we need to stand behind and we need to be with and help in any way we can.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:36

Yeah, thank you. And regards to to time, you know, we're we're getting close here. We have one more question that I want to make sure that get in, you know, I want to let everybody know and remind you we're gonna have a second episode that will go a lot deeper into the work that Tiana and Norm do. We could have spent easily another episode, you know, talking about all of this. And again, it's I want to give you both credit for trying to simplify a very, very complex topic because there's so many layers, once again, to it. What's the emotional toll on the community when cases aren't solved?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

Well, I'd like to say that it's it's a ripple effect. It's just it's it's a never-ending. It doesn't matter if the case happened 30 years ago, 10 years ago, five days ago, or right now. The emotions are unimaginable, right? Again, like I say, imagine it your daughter, your your son, your relative. Try and realize that they really are. There are brothers and our sisters, there are mothers and our fathers, there are aunties and our uncles, there are grandmas and our grandpas, they're our children. They're all of ours. And we need to protect them.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:48

I think it's really important at this time that we talk about ambiguous loss and chronic grief that occurs when a death is confirmed, not only when a death is confirmed, but justice or closure isn't. And families cannot fully process grief because the story remains incomplete. When there is a case or a loved one that remains missing, or a case that isn't closed, it manifests in deep ways and it can affect a person as anybody would know, you know, with anxiety and panic and depressive episodes and sleep disturbances and difficulty functioning in daily life. And over time, unresolved grief can become complicated grief, affecting health and relationships and the ability to trust others. So it isn't harder that we have lost a loved one in such a way. It's the it is also the intergenerational trauma that's experienced by one generation after another. It transmits to our children and to our grandchildren. And so now our youth are experiencing hypervigilance and low sense of safety and emotional numbing and anger. So this is compounded when systemic racism and cultural erasure exists alongside personal trauma. And not only is it personal and experiencing in an autonomous way, but then we have, as community, as an indigenous community, we're walking in a collective trauma where our entire communities internalize fear and grief and anger. And that those symptoms are can include community-wide mistrust of authorities and anxiety about public spaces. There's a lot of that, and social fragmentation over protection. So trauma is both individual and social, and it requires collective approaches for healing. And and I know that healing is a really important topic that we need to bring in because of this ongoing trauma and the intergenerational trauma, also. We're talking about generational trauma, but the MMIW crisis cannot be separated from the broader legacy of violence against indigenous peoples. And its unresolved cases reinforce long-standing patterns of systemic neglect and racism, displacement, and cultural erasure. Children grow up witnessing unresolved grief and injustice, which can shape their worldview and their mental health. So we know that I'm so grateful that you asked this question because oftentimes people forget the families, not just, oh my goodness, I'm gonna cry. Not just in a way that we have thoughts about it, but understanding you have mothers and daughters, and they have siblings and they have grandmas raising grandchildren, and the pressure that it puts on a family because of the ways that our people are carrying this grief, and how it leads to all kinds of other ways that impact our people through self-medicating our grief, and then the more burden that it puts on an already grieving family. So I love the story that my my grandgrand said once at one of the events we were learning from with the beautiful indigenous knowledge, there was a relative who had lost her daughter, her three-year-old, and they were talking about healing. And she's like, healing, there is no healing, there is no healing. That I am never gonna heal from this. This is I I I hear it in the voices of the mothers that we talk to, and the mothers that we see their daily post of grieving and longing for that reconnection and the the loss that they have experienced witnessing their daughters grow, knowing the way that they're suffering. We just want it to stop. That's what we want to stop is the suffering. We need it to end. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's just really important that we understand that we may not heal ever, but we are in a healing journey together, and that collectively we can show up for each other, that we could be good relatives to one another, and that we can make sure that we have things in place and to fight for our rights to keep this from happening.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:58

I really like the term that you used because these are things that won't be forgotten. These are emotions that won't be forgotten, these are stories that won't be forgotten, these are people that won't be forgotten. So there will never be complete healing from this for these families, for you, for the people that are a part of it, for the people that are connected. But like you said, hopefully you can all and there can continue to be with a bigger amount a healing journey together.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Right, because healing doesn't mean necessarily moving on, it means restoring our dignity, our power, and our connection and collective remembrances that we hold, like the red dress installations, the red TB's, annual remembrance days. These are really important ways that we can transform grief into solidarity and honor the victims as loved ones and valued, reminding us of a broader public guess, that we we can shout it from the mountaintops that we are still healed. We've having that indigenous mental health supports where we have indigenous therapists, we have trauma-informed care, we have elders guiding our youth, and we have community-based grief counseling, really focusing on the mental health after we've had these losses, you know, is really important. And just can staying in the fight for justice, advocacy, and keeping cold cases alive. We we just have to have ongoing investigations and media advocacy and pressure for task force and reopen cases because this is something that it takes all of your being to do, and it's a lot, yeah. And it's hard to imagine that how we continue to carry on in such a way, and and we need to find policy reform, you know, and this is how we have to work together.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:59

And I think one of the most important things we all need to find is our humanity.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:04

Yeah, I agree, I agree 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:07

I think that's a good place to land and lead us into the work that we do and right in the ways that that Norm and I show up in our work as way of the sacred mountain.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:21

Yes, yeah. And once again, you know, I I want to thank both of you for this first of two episodes where we hoped to educate a lot of you out there and provide you with information, whether it's new, whether it's information you've already known. I'm sure you've benefited from this in some way, terms of what Norm and Tiana have have had to share. Again, the second episode, we're gonna go into a lot of the work they do, which again is absolutely beautiful. I'm gonna also put it in the chat of this episode as well, too. But please go to wayofthesacredmountain.org, check out their website. You have the ability to donate on there as well, too. Again, whatever you can would be helpful, whatever's in your heart to do. They do this work completely outside of their own jobs, their own lives, everything. It's just a lot for them to take on with what they do, and they put a lot out there. So you can donate, that would be much appreciated. And I'm gonna ask everybody, please share this episode with at least one person, and then ask that person to share this episode with at least one person. One thing we need to do about this issue is make it loud and put it out there for as many people to hear as we can. Yeah, and with that, Norm, Tayana, again, thank you. Do you want to say a last word, a goodbye to the to listeners before we end the episode?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:51

Well, I would just start to say thank you for having us. You know, this is something that we it affects us all, and and we need to realize it affects us all. You can always donate your time to show up, educate yourself, help join us.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:05

And excellent. All right. Well, once again, thank you everybody for tuning in, and we will be back soon for the second episode of MMIW. All right, thank you very much, and take care.