Native American Culture

12/23/2024

12/23/2024

Native american family ❤️❤️

05/19/2024

Bannock, North American Indian tribe that lived in what is now southern Idaho, especially along the Snake River and its tributaries, and joined with the Shoshone tribe in the second half of the 19th century. Linguistically, they were most closely related to the Northern Paiute of what is now eastern Oregon, from whom they were separated by approximately 200 miles (320 km).
According to both Paiute and Bannock legend, the Bannock moved eastward to Idaho to live among the Shoshone and hunt buffalo. Traditional Bannock and Shoshone cultures emphasized equestrian buffalo hunting and a seminomadic life. The Bannock also engaged in summer migrations westward to the Shoshone Falls, where they gathered salmon, small game, and berries. They traveled into the Rockies each fall to hunt buffalo in the Yellowstone area of what are now Wyoming and Montana.
Bannock social organization was based upon independent bands, and the autumn hunting expeditions allowed band chiefs to acquire power over one sector of hunting and subsistence activities. These trips traversed Shoshone territory, requiring a good deal of cooperation with that tribe. Much of the Bannocks’ eastern territory was contiguous with the Shoshone’s western lands; as close and friendly neighbours, they often camped side by side, and intermarriage was common. The two tribes also shared a common enemy in the fierce Blackfoot, who controlled the buffalo-hunting grounds in Montana. The Fort Hall reservation in Idaho was established for the Shoshone in the 1860s, and many Bannock soon joined them; very close interaction and continued intermarriage blended the two cultures, and the tribes began to use the combined name “Shoshone-Bannock.”
Before colonization the Bannock were not numerous, probably never reaching more than 2,000. However, they had considerable influence in inciting their more pacific neighbours to revolts and raids against the U.S. settlers in the area. Famine, frustration over the disappearance of the buffalo, and insensitive reservation policy by the U.S. government led to the Bannock War in 1878, which was suppressed with a massacre of about 140 Bannock men, women, and children at Charles’s Ford in what is now Wyoming.
Early 21st-century population estimates indicated more than 5,000 individuals of Shoshone and Bannock descent.

05/18/2024

CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL, SOUTH DAKATA - One of the largest sculpture projects in the world
The Crazy Horse Memorial is a massive mountain carving located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA. It depicts Crazy Horse, a legendary Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial honors Crazy Horse's legacy and serves as a symbol of Native American pride, culture, and resilience.
Work on the Crazy Horse Memorial began in 1948 under the direction of sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and continues to this day. It is one of the largest ongoing sculptural projects in the world. The memorial is intended to be much more than just a carving; it also includes a cultural and educational center, museum, and Native American university.
The Crazy Horse Memorial stands as a tribute to the spirit and endurance of Native American peoples and their contributions to American history and culture. It is a significant tourist attraction and a symbol of hope and inspiration for Indigenous communities across the country.

05/18/2024

Ute woman, Colorado, circa 1899.
This photo of a Ute woman, identified on the photo as Pee-a-rat, and her baby in a cradleboard, was part of a series of Ute images taken by the Denver photography studio of Rose & Hopkins in about 1899.
John K. Rose (1849-1932), Benjamin Hopkins (1859-1915), and Lee Morehouse (1850-1926) of Rose & Hopkins, were photographers based in Denver who took photos of Native American Indians wearing traditional dress, including members of the Ute, Arapaho, Shoshone, Pueblo, and Apache tribes throughout Colorado and Wyoming. Portraits include Southern Ute Chief Sapiah (also known as Buckskin Charley), Sapiah’s wife Towee, Weeminuche Ute Chief Ignacio, and Apache Chief James A. Garfield, and many others. Many of their studio portraits were taken at the Denver Festival of Mountain and Plain circa 1896-1899.
Although many of the sitters in the photos are identified, and some are well-known, for many, such as Pee-a-rat, we know nothing beyond their names.
Photo courtesy Denver Public Library.
One of our readers, Carole Graham, exercised a little lateral thinking, and might have come up with a bit more about Pee-a-rat and her child: "There's a Ute woman whose name is extremely close, A-cop-e-a-rat, (age 27) living on the Southern Ute Reservation, according to the 1902 Indian Census Rolls. She's been given the name "Anna Lyon Parker" and has a 1 year old baby daughter, Pu-o. Good chance this is the woman in the photo, especially if it was actually taken ca. 1901-1902.

05/18/2024

No more Stolen sisters/brothers. Heart reacts only. ❤❤❤

05/17/2024

Cherokee Women and Their Important Roles:
Women in the Cherokee society were equal to men. They could earn the title of War Women and sit in councils as equals. This privilege led an Irishman named Adair who traded with the Cherokee from 1736-1743 to accuse the Cherokee of having a "petticoat government".
Clan kinship followed the mother's side of the family. The children grew up in the mother's house, and it was the duty of an uncle on the mother's side to teach the boys how to hunt, fish, and perform certain tribal duties. The women owned the houses and their furnishings. Marriages were carefully negotiated, but if a woman decided to divorce her spouse, she simply placed his belongings outside the house. Cherokee women also worked hard. They cared for the children, cooked, tended the house, tanned skins, wove baskets, and cultivated the fields. Men helped with some household chores like sewing, but they spent most of their time hunting.
Cherokee girls learned by example how to be warriors and healers. They learned to weave baskets, tell stories, trade, and dance. They became mothers and wives, and learned their heritage. The Cherokee learned to adapt, and the women were the core of the Cherokee.

05/17/2024

Honoring Indigenous Peoples in Oregon

During October, the state of Oregon recognizes Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the second Monday of the month. Although the holiday was first proposed by Indigenous peoples at a United Nations conference held in 1977 to address discrimination against Indigenous peoples in the Americas, it was only first recognized nationally by the Biden Administration on Oct. 11, 2021. However, it is still not considered a federal holiday.

The State of Oregon first recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a state holiday in 2021. This law was set in motion by Oregon’s only Indigenous lawmakers, Rep. Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, and Rep. Teresa Alonso-Leon, D-Woodburn, who brought House Bill 2526 to the Oregon legislature in the spring of 2021. This blog post will cover the history of Indigenous peoples in Oregon and modern-day issues Indigenous communities face.

A History of Reservations, Termination and Restoration
As a result of the whitewashing of the history of Native genocide, much of Indigenous history has been erased by settler-colonial narratives in Oregon. Senate Bill 13 called upon the Oregon Department of Education to develop a statewide curriculum relating to the Native American experience in Oregon. Enacted in 2017, it includes tribal history, tribal sovereignty, culture, treaty rights, government, socioeconomic experiences, and current events. The following is a summary of the history of governmental control of Native lands, abuse, and genocide of Indigenous populations throughout Oregon’s history.

Indigenous tribes have existed in Oregon since time immemorial, and Native populations have long stewarded the land that the U.S. has colonized. After suffering decades of diseases brought by European settlers, like malaria, and genocide inflicted by European colonizers, many Native populations in Oregon were decimated. It is estimated that by 1850, the population of the Kalapuya, one Native tribe who originally occupied over a million acres across the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys, went from over 20,000 people to about 1,000. Use this interactive map to find out what Native land you live on.

The Reservation Era (1850-1887) in the U.S. came after the disinvestment and removal of Native peoples from their homelands, enforced through violence and terror. During this era, dedicated portions of land were allocated to federally recognized tribes. In Oregon, the federal government intended the Coast Indian Reservation to be the sole permanent reservation in western Oregon for the native peoples of the Willamette Valley, southwestern Oregon, and the coast.

The principal tribes who signed the treaties to negotiate the cessation of their lands in exchange for the dedicated reservation were the Umpqua, Athapaska, Kalapuya, Molala, Chasta, and Chinook. After the Rogue River Indian war broke out in the spring of 1855, President Franklin Pierce signed the executive order establishing the Coast Reservation that fall.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant established the 1.8 million-acre Malheur Indian Reservation for tribes living in eastern and southeastern Oregon. The intent behind the U.S. government negotiating treaties with Native peoples was to lump different tribes together to gain control over their lands and resources. Use this interactive map to see a time-lapse of how the U.S. stole more than 1.5 billion acres from Native Americans.

This practice led to the government consolidating formerly independent tribal nations onto reservations often far from their homelands. One example is the Grand Ronde Reservation, to which members of 27 tribes and bands from western Oregon, southern Washington, and northern California were removed.

By the 1950s, the U.S. government began enacting legislation to terminate trust relations with Native tribes and the 374 United States-Indian treaties that were ratified between 1778 and 1871. With the goal of giving opportunist constituents the ability to capitalize on natural resources located on reservations, the federal government targeted tribes like the Klamath and the Menominee for their rich timberlands. To eliminate Native sovereignty over their lands, the 83rd Congress passed Public Law 280 in August of 1953, which allowed Oregon and five other states to have civil and criminal jurisdiction over reservations.

Congress also approved House Concurrent Resolution 108 in August of 1953, which directed the government to make the Native peoples within the territorial limits of the U.S. subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as other American citizens, effectively ending their status as wards of the U.S. However, tribal citizens were not granted the right to vote until 1953. This action not only undermined tribal sovereignty, but also cut off treaty-guaranteed services, and took even more land out of Indigenous hands.

Despite their agreement to these treaties, many Native people, like the Klamath, felt misinformed and misled by the termination treaties they agreed to, with legal consequences of certain sections of termination laws leading to unequal outcomes. For example, Klamath lands had been appraised for $91 million, resulting in 1,659 individual members of the tribe receiving a one-time payment of $44,000. With 590,000 acres of rich timberland in the balance, the payoff for opportunists in the timber industry was much greater than it was for the tribal members.

In 1975, Congress considered the Siletz Restoration Act, backed by Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, tribal members from different tribes lobbied and testified to regain recognition and restore their terminated federal trust relationships. Recognition was restored thanks to decades of tireless work by tribal activists. Since then, restored tribes in Oregon have been working to rebuild their nations over time. As of 2022, there are 574 federally recognized tribes, approximately 229 of them in Alaska. There are many federally unrecognized tribes as well.

Modern Day Indigenous Communities
Today there are nine federally recognized tribal communities in Oregon. They consist of the Burns Paiute Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, the Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Coquille Indian Tribe, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, and the Klamath Tribes.

Over the past few years, COVID-19 has caused a massive death toll in Indigenous communities. Between 2019 and 2021, the average life expectancy of Native Americans dropped by almost seven years. Experts link this sudden drop in life expectancy to higher rates of poverty within Native communities, with more underlying health problems, like obesity and diabetes, which exacerbate COVID-19, as well as the overall lack of access to healthcare.

Due to a lack of resources, unrecognized Indigenous tribes in particular are struggling greatly with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their communities. While federally recognized tribes received billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funds, unrecognized tribes have been left empty-handed.

Despite the challenges that Indigenous communities are facing, there have also been many triumphs due to Indigenous movements in recent years. Led by Indigenous communities, the landback movement has helped influence environmental successes like the imminent removal of the Klamath River dams located on the border of California and Oregon. The hydroelectric dams, owned by the electric power company, PacifiCorp, are set to be removed in 2024.

After a 20-year fight to save the chinook salmon, the long sought-after removal of the dams will open 420 miles of salmon-spawning habitat, improve water quality, and reduce critical temperature conditions that cause and increase disease in fish. The self-governed Karuk Tribe, Yurok Tribe, and the U.S. Forest Service are all closely monitoring the salmon population along with other agencies.

Founded in 1993 by the late Martin High Bear, Lakota medicine man and spiritual leader, and Rose High Bear, Deg Hitan Dine (or Alaskan Athabascan), and Inupiat, Wisdom of the Elders Inc. is an organization based in Portland that works to promote Native American cultural sustainability, multimedia education, and cultural reconciliation. They host regular public cultural events throughout Oregon and offer paid internship opportunities for Native American adults and BIPOC in the Portland area.

Housing News in Indigenous Communities
In May of 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior released a 100-page report on federal Indigenous boarding schools of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, detailing the abuse of students and over 500 student deaths. While the report offers valuable information about the history of government-backed abuse of Native populations in the U.S., Deb Haaland, Interior Secretary and first Native American cabinet secretary responded by pointing out that the continued disparities that Indigenous communities face today are examples of the ongoing attempts to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people. You can read more about the sordid history of Indigenous boarding schools in our November 2021 Bus Tour Newsletter.

The Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) in Portland is one organization addressing the unique needs of Native populations in the region. They provide housing along with culturally specific services with the goal to empower Native people. They recently opened the Mamook Tokatee housing project in the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland.

Named for the Chinook Wawa phrase meaning “Make Beautiful,” the project is a collaboration between the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and Community Development Partners. With 56 total units, 20 units are reserved for members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and six units are meant specifically for artists.

05/17/2024

Fancy dance, Pan-Indian dancing, Fancy Feather or Fancy War Dance is a style of dance some believe was originally created by members of the Ponca tribe in the 1920s and 1930s, in an attempt to preserve their culture and religion. It is loosely based on the war dance. Fancy dance was considered appropriate to be performed for visitors to reservations and at "Wild West" shows. But today, fancy dancers can be seen at many powwows across the nation and even the world.

History
Native American dances, the practices of medicine men, and religious ceremonies were banned by White authorities with the introduction of The Code of Indian Offenses in 1883. As in many oppressed cultures, the ceremonies simply went underground to avoid detection by the authorities. Tribes created new dances that could legally be danced in public. Kiowa and Comanche created new styles of dance regalia in the 1930s that included long-johns with bells attached to the knee up to the waist, two small arm bustles with white fluff, two bustles with white down, beadwork harnesses, and some feathers, and the roach being tall and usually with fluffs. This regalia would be incorporated into the fancy dance.

The fancy dance was developed after 1928, when the Ponca Tribe built their own dance arena in White Eagle, Oklahoma. Two young Ponca boys are specifically credited with developing the fast-paced dance that the audiences loved. One of the boys was the grandfather of Parrish Williams, a Ponca roadman. The Wild West shows popularized the dance. Gus McDonald (Ponca) was the first World Champion Fancy War Dancer.

The intertribal powwow circuit was established in the early 20th century, spreading across the Southern Plains. The Kiowa held contest powwows as early as 1918. Among Kiowa, fancy dancing was incorporated into the O-ho-mah Society. Contest powwows became an important source of income during the Great Depression. Professional fancy dancers of the 1930s included Chester Lefthand (Arapaho), Stephen Mopope (Kiowa), Dennis Rough Face (Ponca), and George "Woogie" Watchetaker (Comanche). In the 1940s, Elmer Sugar Brown added back flips to his fancy dancing and Gus McDonald added both cartwheels and splits.

In the late 1930s, women began fancy dancing, wearing the same regalia as men. By the 1940s, women's fancy dancing was well established. Shalah Rowlen (Sac and Fox) fancy danced with her sisters, wearing bustles, in the early 1940s. Women's fancy dancing declined in the 1950s, but in the 1960s and 1970s, the dance came back as the women's fancy shawl dance.

Despite its name, derived from an African language, the Gombey dancers of Bermuda appear to owe more to Algonquian traditions, thanks to hundreds of Native Americans sent to Bermuda as slaves during the Seventeenth Century. Their modern costume is completely reliant on materials that would have been difficult or impossible to obtain in Bermuda during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, including the tailfeathers of the Asian peacock that adorn the head dress. Feathers of native birds perhaps once were used to adorn a simpler, but still colourful costume. Their dance was clearly once a war dance, with the troupe member called The Bowman or Lead Indian carrying a bow and arrow and often going slightly ahead of the troupe to scout the way on long marches, and the Warriors carrying tomahawks, which they place on their shoulders and use during cockfights when they face off against each other, and the steps were recognised by Wampanoag dancers after the Wampanoag and Pequots began a series of Reconnection festivals with Bermudians in 2000.

Description

Men's fancy dance is flashy, colorful and highly energetic. It requires strength and stamina and is usually performed by younger men and boys. The drum can play a medium war beat, a ruffle, crow hop, and a fast beat. It is always expected that a fancy dancer should do a pose at each end of the beat. Some might do splits or stop in mid-air. Male fancy dancers typically wear brightly colored regalia. Twin feather bustles are one of the hallmarks of modern fancy dance regalia, along with a beaded bodice, leggings or breech cloth and side tabs (most popular), bells just below the knees, Icelandic sheep hair or also known as "Goats", moccasins, a roach with two feathers (Most wear a roach rocker which rocks the feathers with the dancer's movements), beaded cuffs, beaded headband, and other feathered or beaded accouterments. The regalia often has a fringe of many colors. The old style regalia is making a comeback.

The women's fancy shawl dance represents the opening of a cocoon when the butterfly emerges. The shawl is usually the most extravagant piece. The fringed shawls are colorful and flashy, often featuring embroidery or ribbon work. The fringe on the shawl have a movement that coincides with the dancer. The dancers usually wear beaded or appliqued designs, and beaded hairpieces. Chokers, earrings, bracelets, and eagle plumes are usually worn as well. Elaborate moccasins and leggings complete the regalia. The practice of women's fancy shawl dance is far more recent than that of Men's Fancy Dance. It wasn't until fancy dance had existed for several decades that women began to participate.

Competition
The men's fancy dance is one of the most popular contemporary powwow dances. Thus living up to its name, the fancy dance is a highly athletic dance with lots of movement. As the dancer dances, his regalia moves with the dancer to create the tone of the following of motion. The medium war, ruffle, crow hop, and fast beats are usually mixed together and are usually called mix-up songs or confusion songs. The Fancy Dancer must dance according to the beat and must strike a "pose" whenever the drum beat stops. Singers can try to trick the dances with unexpected final beats.

The popularity of fancy dance - sometimes as a competitive sport - has spread, and is now practiced by many Native American tribes.

05/17/2024

The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by some Native Americans in the United States and Indigenous peoples in Canada, primarily those of the Plains cultures. It usually involves the community gathering together to pray for healing. Individuals make personal sacrifices on behalf of the community.

After European colonization of the Americas, and with the formation of the Canadian and United States governments, both countries passed laws intended to suppress Indigenous cultures and force assimilation to majority-Anglo-American culture.

The Sun Dance was one of the prohibited ceremonies, as was the potlatch of the Pacific Northwest peoples. Canada lifted its prohibition against the practice of the full ceremony in 1951. In the United States, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in 1978, which was enacted to protect basic civil liberties, and to protect and preserve the traditional religious rights and cultural practices of Native Americans, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians.

Description

Placing the clan poles, c. 1910.
Several features are common to the ceremonies held by Sun Dance cultures. These include dances and songs passed down through many generations, the use of a traditional drum, a sacred fire, praying with a ceremonial pipe, fasting from food and water before participating in the dance, and, in some cases, the ceremonial piercing of skin and a trial of physical endurance. Certain plants are picked and prepared for use during the ceremony.

Typically, the Sun Dance is a grueling ordeal for the dancers, a physical and spiritual test that they offer in sacrifice for their people. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, young men dance around a pole to which they are fastened by "rawhide thongs pegged through the skin of their chests." While not all Sun Dance ceremonies include piercing, the object of the Sun Dance is to offer personal sacrifice for the benefit of one's family and community. The dancers fast for many days, in the open air and whatever weather occurs.

At most ceremonies, family members and friends stay in the surrounding camp and pray in support of the dancers. Much time and energy by the entire community are needed to conduct the sun dance gatherings and ceremonies. Communities plan and organize for at least a year to prepare for the ceremony. Usually, one leader or a small group of leaders are in charge of the ceremony, but many elders help out and advise. A group of helpers do many of the tasks required to prepare for the ceremony.

Canada: Obstruction, prohibition and resistance
The Government of Canada, through the Department of Indian Affairs (now Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Development Canada), persecuted Sun Dance practitioners and attempted to suppress the dance. Indian agents, based on directives from their superiors, did routinely interfere with, discouraged, and disallowed sun dances on many Canadian plains communities from 1882 until the 1940s.

The Canadian government outlawed "any celebration or dance of which the wounding or mutilation of the dead or living body of any human being or animal forms a part or is a feature" in an 1895 amendment to the Indian Act. Anyone who engaged, assisted or encouraged (either directly or indirectly) was liable to imprisonment. Though not all nations' Sun Dances include the body piercings, the amendment legally prohibited its performance for those communities that did.

It is unclear how often this law was actually enforced; in at least one instance[when?], police are known to have given their permission for the ceremony to be conducted. The First Nations people simply conducted many ceremonies quietly and in secret. Sun dance practitioners, such as the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, and Blackfoot, continued to hold sun dances throughout the persecution period. Some practiced the dance in secret, others with permissions from their agents, and others without the body piercing.

In 1951, government officials amended the Indian Act, dropping the prohibition against practices of flesh-wounding.

Contemporary practices
The Sun Dance is practiced annually in many First Nations communities in Canada. The Cree and Saulteaux have conducted at least one Rain Dance (with similar elements) each year since 1880 somewhere on the Canadian Plains.

In 1993, responding to what they believed was a frequent desecration of the Sun Dance and other Lakota sacred ceremonies, US and Canadian Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations held "the Lakota Summit V". It was an international gathering of about 500 representatives from 40 different peoples and bands of the Lakota. They unanimously passed the following 'Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality':

"Whereas sacrilegious "sundances" for non-Indians are being conducted by charlatans and cult leaders who promote abominable and obscene imitations of our sacred Lakota sundance rites; ... We hereby and henceforth declare war against all persons who persist in exploiting, abusing, and misrepresenting the sacred traditions and spiritual practices of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people." - Mesteth, Wilmer, et al (1993)

In 1995, efforts to continue practicing the ceremony on a tract of unceded Secwepemc land led to an armed confrontation known as the Gustafsen Lake standoff.

In 2003, the 19th-Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Lakota asked non-Indigenous people to stop attending the Sun Dance (Wi-wayang-wa-c'i-pi in Lakota); he stated that all can pray in support, but that only Indigenous people should approach the altars. This statement was supported by keepers of sacred bundles and traditional spiritual leaders from the Cheyenne, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota nations, who issued a proclamation that non-Indigenous people would be banned from sacred altars and the Seven Sacred Rites, including and especially the sun dance, effective March 9, 2003 onward:

The Wi-wanyang-wa-c'i-pi (Sundance Ceremony): The only participants allowed in the centre will be Native People. The non-Native people need to understand and respect our decision. If there have been any unfinished commitments to the sundance and non-Natives have concern for this decision; they must understand that we have been guided through prayer to reach this resolution. Our purpose for the sundance is for the survival of the future generations to come, first and foremost. If the non-Natives truly understand this purpose, they will also understand this decision and know that by their departure from this Ho-c'o-ka (our sacred altar) is their sincere contribution to the survival of our future generations.

Filming

In most Sun Dance cultures, it is forbidden to film ceremony or prayer. Few images exist of authentic ceremonies. Many First Nations people believe that when money or cameras enter, the spirits leave, so no photo conveys an authentic ceremony. The Kainai Nation in Alberta permitted filming of their Sun Dance in the late 1950s. This was released as the documentary Circle of the Sun (1960), produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Manitoba archival photos show that the ceremonies have been consistently practiced since at least the early 1900s.

05/11/2024

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is an epidemic of violence against Indigenous women in Canada and the United States, notably those in the FNIM (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) and Native American communities, and a grassroots movement to raise awareness of MMIW through organizing marches; building databases of the missing; holding local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and conducting domestic violence trainings and other informational sessions for police.
Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities in both the US and Canada have fought to bring awareness to the connection between s*x trafficking, s*xual harassment, s*xual assault, and the women who go missing and are murdered. From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for Indigenous women in Canada was almost six times as high as the homicide rate for other women: In Nunavut, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, this over-representation of Indigenous women among homicide victims was even higher. In the US, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic; one in three Indigenous women is s*xually assaulted during her life, and 67% of these assaults involve non-Indigenous perpetrators.
MMIW has been described as a Canadian national crisis and a Canadian genocide. In response to repeated calls from Indigenous groups, activists, and non-governmental organizations, the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016. According to the inquiry's backgrounder, "Indigenous women and girls in Canada are disproportionately affected by all forms of violence. Although Indigenous women make up 4 per cent of Canada's female population, 16 per cent of all women murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012 were Indigenous." The inquiry was completed and presented to the public on June 3, 2019.
Notable MMIW cases in Canada include 19 women killed in the Highway of Tears murders, and some of the 49 women from the Vancouver area murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton.
In the US, the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized in 2013, which for the first time gave tribes jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute felony domestic violence offenses involving both Native American offenders as well as non-Native offenders on reservations. In 2019, the House of Representatives, led by the Democratic Party, passed H.R. 1585 (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) by a vote of 263–158, which increases tribes' prosecution rights much further. The bill was not taken up by the Senate, which at the time had a Republican majority.