Mapping Networks of Community Defense for MMIW/P
By Patricia Garcia Iruegas and Ana Amelia Letelier
Today, May the 5th, we bring awareness to the emergency of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Persons (MMIW/P). The National Institute of Justice reports that American Indians are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes and one in three Native women report having been raped during their lifetime. This emergency is exacerbated by the lack of justice. According to the Sovereign Bodies Institute, “the lack of justice for families and survivors is especially concerning in light of the minimal albeit growing nationwide data on MMIW/P. Most MMIW/P cases remain unsolved despite their families’ best efforts in reporting and memorializing their missing and murdered loved ones”.
On this day we remember the lives that have been taken by on-going settler colonial violence and acknowledge the urgency to bring awareness to the issue and take action. Over the past year, the Data+Feminism Lab (D+F Lab) at MIT developed a collaboration with Wisconsin-based organization Waking Women Healing Institute (WWHI). WWHI is a grassroots indigenous-led group which focuses on providing healing, responsive and preventative resources for families of MMIW/P. The collaboration between the D+F Lab and WWHI began in Summer 2022 with co-design sessions, brainstorms, and a visit from the D+F team to the Menominee Reservation. One aspect of the collaboration emerged from WWHI’s vision for a MMIW/P Resource Map which concentrates agencies, non-profits, grassroots movements and organizations across the United States and Canada that provide direct services to families and relatives of MMIW/P. The goal is to improve the access to services and support for those experiencing violence and cases of MMIW/P by providing information about available specialized regional services. With this map, grassroots community organizations can strengthen their networks with each other, coordinate services for families, and build connections for collective advocacy.
This past February, we traveled to the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin for the MMWI/P Family Resource Day hosted by Waking Women Healing Institute. During the visit we had the opportunity to meet agencies and organizations working together to bring awareness to the issue and provide information about available resources. Before starting with the panelists’ presentation, the Menominee Tribe shared with us their tradition of hosting a ceremony to honor the memory of victims of MMIW/P. This moment allowed us to reflect on the responsibility of projects such as this one, which could potentially reach thousands of people and provide support in the hardest of times.
During our presentation we shared the process of developing the MMIW/P Resource Map. We shared how after months of an iterative process, the D+F team composed by students of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning developed a visual map of 127 organizations with contact information and characteristics of the provided services of each organization. This exercise also allowed us to provide a general perspective on the presence of MMIW/P-focused organizations and resources in the regions of the U.S. and Canada. While the map allows us to understand which services are available in each state or province it also provides a perspective on certain regions which lack specialized services around the MMIW/P issue.
During the next months, the D+F Lab and WWHI will officially launch the MMIW/P Resource Map as we are working to reach out to every single organization to obtain their consent to be added to the map and map new organizations in the Mexican territory so that the map has resources for community defenders across Turtle Island.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to our co-leader Kristin Welch, WWHI Executive Director and our fantastic host on Menominee lands. Also thank you to the other students who have worked on this project so far (Julia Camacho, Kevin Lujan Lee, Dení Lopez, Hannah Shumway, Melissa Teng, Betza Valdés, Sophia Xiao) and to the WWHI staff who hosted us and contributed to this project. Special thanks to Mikiya Alloway of Medicine Kitchen who catered beautiful healthy meals for us during our visit to WWHI. And a final thanks to the Wampanoag Nation and Massachusetts people, on whose lands we have resided while undertaking much of this work.
