{"id":11544,"date":"2021-05-14T13:46:50","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T17:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=11544"},"modified":"2021-05-17T13:43:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T17:43:50","slug":"peoples-world-native-people-march-for-missing-and-murdered-loved-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2021\/05\/14\/peoples-world-native-people-march-for-missing-and-murdered-loved-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"People’s World: Native people march for missing and murdered loved ones"},"content":{"rendered":"\"sacramentoprayerwalk\"\r\n
Photos from the Sacramento Prayer Walk. | Top left and right photos courtesy of Craig Lewis \/ Angela’s March; Bottom left photo: Sacramento Native American Health Center<\/figcaption>\r\n
Hundreds march in California for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women<\/div>\r\n
Friday, May 14, 2021<\/div>\r\n
By Albert Bender<\/div>\r\n
People's World<\/div>\r\n
peoplesworld.org<\/A><\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nSACRAMENTO, California — Hundreds of Native people and their allies marched through the streets of Sacramento to bring awareness to the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) that has plagued this country, and Northern California in particular, for years. It is hoped that this march will become an annual occurrence. Those who organized this first event hailed it as a \u201cPrayer Walk.\u201d\r\n

<\/p>\r\nSeveral Indigenous organizations were behind the Apr. 25th event, including the Native Sisters Circle of Sacramento, the Sacramento Native American Health Center, the Native Dads Network, Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples, and the Wilton Rancheria Tribe.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe Native Sisters Circle of Sacramento<\/a> said the march\u2019s purpose was to bring about greater awareness of the horrendous tragedy that has beset Native women for decades in the United States. The Prayer Walk focused on several Indigenous women who\u2019ve gone missing or been murdered in Northern California and law enforcement\u2019s failure to investigate properly.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nA recent report by the Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI), a data-based nonprofit, Indigenous-led research organization based in Humboldt County, examines the failure to pursue the cases of 105 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls throughout Northern California from the Bay Area to the Oregon border.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nUtilizing police reports, federal and state data, community-focused information, and other research, the SBI uncovered more than 2,300 other cases in the U.S. There is no official, comprehensive database covering all MMIW cases. Undoubtedly, the real figure is much larger. Many Native victims are misclassified as other races, and some deaths are classified as accidental when, according to relatives, clear evidence of foul play is present.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWithin Northern California, the SBI found that the most highly concentrated number of MMIW cases is in the \u201cLost Coast\u201d region of Humboldt, Del Norte, and Mendocino Counties. The Bay Area makes up 16% of cases in the report that never made national headlines or gathered social media attention.\r\n

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Native Sisters Circle of Sacramento: Sacramento Prayer Walk<\/a>\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n

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Northern California focus <\/div>\r\nThe report made clear that the northern part of the state is a focal point for missing and murdered Indigenous people, which documented more than 70 cases in the past two decades. One in five occurred in Humboldt County.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nOf these cases, 22% were Hoopa, 16% Yurok, and 11% were of the Round Valley Reservation.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nOverall, there are more Indigenous people in California than any other state in the U.S. More than 700,000 reside here\u2014on reservations, in rural areas, and in urban centers. There are 102 reservations in California, also more than in any other state. According to SBI, only a minuscule 9% of the murders of Indigenous California women have ever been solved, compared to 60% in the non-Native population, meaning that the killings of Indigenous women in the region are a shocking seven times less likely to be solved than those of any other demographic.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThirty-one percent of the cases examined involved females 18 and younger, and nearly three-fourths of these cases had victims in the foster care system when they disappeared.\r\n

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Angela McConnell, a \r\n26-year-old Native woman from California, was found dead with her partner \r\nMichael Bingham on September 7, 2018. Photo courtesy of the Bender Family \r\n<\/FIGCAPTION>

<\/P>\r\nAs for other cases where there is palpably a homicide, there is no indication of an adequate investigation in a majority of them\u2014or any at all. This writer can speak personally to that issue, as in the case of our niece, Angela McConnell, Hoopa, related to my wife Melanie, who was brutally murdered in September 2018 in the City of Shasta Lake, Calif.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nAs of this writing, notwithstanding numerous and regular inquiries to the investigator assigned to the case, Detective Justin Brewer, the response is always the same: No information can be publicly released. As of lately, calls to Det. Brewer have not been returned. Most homicide investigators report that it is unlikely to get a break in a case months down the line; Angela\u2019s case is now over two years old. Signs at the Sacramento march included \u201cJustice for Angela McConnell.\u201d\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe continued loss of Indigenous women and girls, compounded by law enforcement laxity, it can be argued, stands as another form of the 500-year genocide of Indigenous people in this hemisphere. The narrative of the lives of Native women and girls cut short is replete with the routine minimal to a near-zero response by local law enforcement. Thousands of lives have been lost, thousands of lives of incalculable value\u2014young women who had hopes and dreams for themselves and future generations of the Indigenous. This is indeed an epidemic that is stealing the countless lives of Native people from their families, their tribes, and their communities forever.\r\n

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\n\t\t\n\t\t\tThis Week at Interior May 7, 2021\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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This Week: Secretary Haaland takes part in a red shawl ceremony on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day; the Secretary joins several Cabinet…<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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Department of the Interior: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day<\/a>\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n
Secretary Haaland\u2019s new investigative unit<\/div>\r\nNewly appointed Secretary of the Department of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American (Laguna Pueblo) to hold that position in U.S. history, created a new government unit dedicated to the MMIW issue. Within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services (BIA-OJS), Haaland ordered the establishment of a Missing and Murdered Unit to truly begin the pursuit of justice for Native women and Indigenous communities. The approach of the MMU is to provide leadership and resources to prioritize these cases and coordinate law enforcement resources throughout federal agencies and across Indian Country.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u201cEveryone deserves to be safe in their communities, but the missing Indigenous peoples crisis is one that the Native communities have faced since the dawn of colonization for too long,\u201d said Haaland at the unit\u2019s launch.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nHaaland was undoubtedly alluding to the fact that the atrocities against Indigenous females go back centuries to Columbus and the colonization of the Americas, when his soldiers raped, sexually enslaved, and killed Native women and girls. He rewarded his lieutenants with sex slaves, particularly young girls forced into sexual slavery. In his letters, the infamous invader unabashedly wrote of his crimes:\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u201cA hundred castellanos are easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.\u201d\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThis was clearly the sexual enslavement and molestation of children in its most debased, perverted, and sick form in the history of humanity. Many others were taken as captives back to Spain, where they were sex trafficked for the rest of their lives. The heinous atrocities committed against Native females have continued for hundreds of years and were a part of the genocide that wiped out the huge Indigenous populations of the Caribbean.\r\n

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