“What a lot of people don’t know is that this has been happening for hundreds of years.”
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Day march organizer Robyn Elkins says the event raises awareness and honors the lives of those lost by addressing violence against Indigenous communities – particularly women and girls.
“It’s been talked about in our communities, but a lot of times people just didn’t understand the numbers of our relatives that go missing or are murdered and never found.”
Data from the U.S. Department of Justice says that Native women face murder rates more than ten times that of the national average, and four out of five indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetime. Currently, there are over 4,000 unsolved cases involving missing and murdered indigenous people.
Elkins says while efforts by local, state and federal agencies to solve these cases have improved, there’s still more work to do.
“Part of the reason why we’re out here today is to try and help keep it in the forefront so that we can keep gaining that ground and it doesn’t just get buried or overlooked.”
