In 2023, MMIW Movement Must Tell the Truth about Missing and Murdered Indian Men

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Hain

Telephone: 513-479-3335

In 2023, MMIW Movement Must Tell the Truth about Missing and Murdered Indian Men

WASHINGTON / January 17, 2023 – Reports from the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control reveal that men and boys represent a majority of missing and murdered Indian persons (1). But the Missing and Murdered Indian Women (MMIW) movement continues to ignore these facts:

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice NamUs database revealed that 79 American Indians or Alaska Natives were reported as missing. A majority of these persons were men or boys: 42 males and 37 females (2).
The Centers for Disease Control reports that 75% of all Indian homicide victims are males (3).
Nearly identical percentages of male and female Native Americans have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetimes: 81.6% of males and 84.3% of females, according to the Department of Justice (4).

in Washington State, for example, 27 American Indians went missing from 2000 to 2022: 13 males and 14 females. One of these persons was Matthew Dean, a member of the Makah Indian Tribe. He was last seen on January 14, 2020. Matthew Dean remains missing to this day (5).

In response, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson established the “Washington State Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and People (MMIWP) Task Force” (6). Take note of the group’s name — no mention of “men,” only the de-gendered term, “people.”

Accordingly, the most recent report of the Task Force highlights “women” 80 times, and mentions “men” only seven times. The report acknowledges that homicide is the “fifth leading cause of death for Indigenous men,” but artfully omits the fact that homicide is the seventh leading cause of death for Indian females (6).

Revealing that disparity would expose the inconvenient truth that homicide is a greater problem for Indian men.

Following the recent meeting of the Washington State Task Force, one media account stated, “Murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women, and Seattle has the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of American cities based on available data” (emphasis added) (7).

But what about the chilling fact that three-quarters of murdered Indian persons are men and boys? No mention of that.

In years past, government officials and media accounts turned American Indians into non-persons. The travesty of discrimination continues to the present day, but with a new twist. Erasing the existence of missing and murdered boys and men is sexist, unfair, and wrong.

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