The Oshkii Giizhik Singers perform at a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives fundraiser. | Photo by Frank Zufall

Family members of missing and murdered Indigenous people, along with their friends and supporters, gathered at Denfeld High School in Duluth, Minnesota Saturday for a fundraiser titled , “No More MMIW/R Concert and Art Exhibition – Honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.”

The purpose of the event was to raise money to help families of those who have been murdered or gone missing.

Event organizer Rene Goodrich, Native Lives Matter Coalition leader and a member of both the Minnesota and Wisconsin MMIW/R task forces, said the dollars raised would go to a MMIW/R mutual aid fund called Wiidosendiwag, Ojibwe for “Walking Together.”

Goodrich said the support would help families continue searches for relatives and fund advocacy and awareness in local communities.

Families represented at the event included relatives of Chantel Moose, 27, a Fond du Lac tribal member in Minnesota, who died from a knife wound on April 12 in Duluth (two persons have been taken into custody for the offense). They were joined by relatives of Peter M. Martin, 32, also a Fond du Lac tribal member who has been missing since March 8, 2024, last seen in the Mahnomen neighborhood of the reservation.

Attendees at the event observed an art exhibition of red dresses inspired by the MMIW/R movement.

Groups opposing the Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline near the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin and representatives of agencies helping victims of sexual assault set up tables at the event.

The fundraiser featured a concert by the Oshkii Giizhik Singers, a traditional group of Indigenous women, Native American flute playing by Michael LaughingFox Charette (a Red Cliff tribal member) and two members of the Christian rock band, Remedy Drive, from Nashville, Tennessee, followed by Mitch McVicker, another Christian contemporary singer, with a final performance by Keith Secola, folk and blues rocker, who is a seven-time Native American Music Award winner.

David Zach, lead singer for Remedy Drive, has been involved with a group that has organized to fight sex trafficking in Asia and Central America.

Peter Martin

At one of the tables were family members and a friend of Peter Martin. They are all Fond du Lac tribal members: Martin’s older sister Linda Martin-Proulx, niece Izzy Proulx and friend of the family, Kayla Jackson.

The ongoing search efforts by the Martin family will be helped by funds raised Saturday.

“He has been missing since March 8, and we did a search on the Fond du Lac reservation,” said Jackson. “We’ve searched over 1,000 acres on the reservation.”

“He lived on Rustic Lane. It’s not like him to just leave without telling anybody,” said Izzy Proulx. “He’s really a homebody, so we think it’s really out of his character to just go off and not tell anybody. There’s been no activity on any of his social media or his bank accounts, like nothing.”

Initially there were intense searches for Martin, coordinated with law enforcement and tribal organizations, but then a heavy snow fell and hampered the effort.

“There were a lot of people coming out to help us before the snow,” said Izzy. “It (searches after the snow) got harder and harder but we still kept searching.”
Local law enforcement has been working with the family, collecting evidence and tips.
Izzy said tribal people often don’t trust law enforcement, but are more willing to give tips to the family.

The three women believe that there is foul play involved in Martin’s disappearance.
“As you see on the flier, he’s 32 and he’s a father,” said Izzy. “His daughter is maybe one or two years old when he went missing, so he’s a first-time father and he wouldn’t just leave his daughter behind and he is from a big family.”

The searches have uncovered articles of clothing believed to be Martin’s. The family is conducting ongoing searches in areas that haven’t been looked at. They are using technology from law enforcement to organize efforts so the searchers in the forest can systematically comb for evidence.

“We’ve had some dogs brought in from South Dakota to work with us, too,” said Izzy.
There was also a contribution of remote communication radios in the field, and the Fond du Lac Police Department has been working with the family to ensure the searches are safe.

“They gave us life jackets to wear as we were searching over bogs,” she said.
However, as time drags on, the search effort is more and more just family members holding out hope they find Martin or evidence to explain what happened to him.

Grassroots effort

Before the concert, Goodrich thanked those who came out to support the fundraiser, and she talked about its importance.

“There’s a larger work that’s happening with Indigenous advocates, grassroots boots on the ground with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives crisis,” she said. “Yes, we do have a crisis. The numbers are astounding.”

She added, “This is not a new crisis. This is not a new epidemic. This is very historical to Turtle Island (Earth) to Indigenous peoples and has been happening since the very onset of colonization onto Turtle Island.”

She noted that in Minnesota there are 13 MMIW/R open cases, representing at least 13 families who have been affected and their larger communities.

According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Justice report, she said, Native American women face murder rates in some U.S. counties and reservations that are 10 times the national average, and homicide is the third leading cause of death for Native American girls between the ages of 10-24 and the fifth leading cause of death for those ages 25-34. More than 84% of Native American women had faced violence in their lifetimes with over 56% experiencing sexual assault.

“Over 40% of our women that have identified as victims of sex trafficking have identified as American Indian, Alaskan Native and also our First Nations (Canadian Indigenous) people,” she said. “So our women are greatly disproportionately targeted by violence.”

Goodrich also cited a 2016 National Institute of Justice study which showed 1.4 million American Indian and Alaska Native men have also experienced violence in their lifetimes.

The MMIW/R movement, Goodrich said, began 40 years ago in Canada and in 2012-13 spread to North Dakota and Minnesota.

In the Twin Ports area of Duluth, Minnesota and neighboring Superior, Wisconsin, non-violence groups, legislators and nonprofit community partners and police departments, especially the Duluth Police, created a local reward fund, called Gaagig-Mikwendaagoziwag, Ojibwe for “They will be remembered forever.” The reward fund has been accepted as a statewide program in Minnesota, offering up to $10,000 for tips on MMIW/R cases.

Goodrich called the effort in Minnesota “historic,”and said the same grassroots effort would be instrumental in creating the fund for families.

“How do we best meet that need?” she asked. “We do that on a grassroots level by meeting just like we’re meeting tonight, by creating innovative and different pathways to meet these needs, and we don’t ask for permission. We push forward and wait for the state to pick it up.”

Future fundraising

A second fundraiser is set for the Twin Ports Trafficking and MMIW Awareness Month on Jan. 11, 2025 in Superior.
More information will be available at https://www.facebook.com/share/19QyCYKLov/

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The proposed site of the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC), (Photo courtesy of Jenny Van Sickle)

A proposed $700 million methane gas plant in Superior hit a new road bump, with the plant’s owners now moving to withdraw requests for an air permit for the facility. If the withdrawal is approved and finalized by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), then the proposed Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC) would be required to go through an entirely new permitting and review process. 

The development has forced companies with a stake in NTEC’s construction to re-evaluate the project. “Due to the extended timeline of the federal permit process, the Nemadji Trail Energy Center partners have requested that the [Wisconsin DNR] revoke the facility’s air permit,” said Dairyland Power Cooperative spokesperson Katie Thomson. “This is a timing issue. The window of time to construct and commission the facility allowed in the air permit is no longer achievable. Therefore, NTEC has requested the [Wisconsin DNR] revoke the project’s air permit; the project partners will determine when to re-apply based on project planning and permitting.”

Thomson added that NTEC’s owners will continue to work to ensure the project is in compliance with environmental regulations. “Recently, NTEC received its 15th regulatory agency approval, with a positive Federal Consistency Certification from the [Wisconsin Department of Administration]. We look forward to continuing to work in good faith as the approval process continues.”

Since NTEC’s owners are withdrawing their air permit application, a hearing with public testimony scheduled for Dec. 2 will likely be canceled. Ron Binzley, a permitting manager in the DNR’s Bureau of Air Management, said that processing such a request “would not take long, a matter of days at most.” Binzley said in an email to Wisconsin Examiner that if NTEC’s construction permit were also revoked, then the gas plant would not be able to break ground without first submitting a new construction permit application, and receiving that permit from the DNR. 

In a correspondence to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shared with Wisconsin Examiner, City of Superior Councilwoman Jenny Van Sickle criticized how NTEC’s owners pursued for the gas plant. Van Sickle wrote that NTEC’s developers “have repeatedly failed to disclose accurate timelines, expirations, and ignored regulators warnings; the Applicants cannot claim their filings are entered in good faith; the scope of their issues are vast and vary across local, state, and Tribal governments and are at odds with federal compliance.” She went on to write, “NTEC’s developers have failed to act where matters were easily within their control, and their overwhelming regulatory problems cannot be addressed by a single or concrete remedy. For example, the developers have not secured site control, an acid rain permit, nor federal approvals, funding, or permits.”

While NTEC’s supporters point to the plant as a way to generate energy-industry jobs, its opponents point to a diverse array of problems with the proposed facility. The plant would be constructed along a bend of the Nemadji River, 300 feet from the shoreline. That portion of the river is host to wetlands and floodplain forests, with the river itself flowing from Lake Superior. The potentially affected habitats are degraded and the Nemadji River has been listed as impaired. The DNR and city of Superior have worked to restore shoreline dunes, nesting habitats, waterways, and wild rice fields. 

The rice fields particularly are important to Indigenous culture in the region, and sacred ancestral sites are located near where NTEC would operate. Tribal communities, including the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, known in their own language as the Gaa-Miskwaabikaang, said some U.S.  government entities which reviewed NTEC local impact “failed to meaningfully engage” with the tribe. Additionally, as a methane gas plant, NTEC’s operation is viewed by environmentalists as  out of touch with climate policies laid out by Gov. Tony Evers. 

The plant’s fate will be in limbo until its owners decide whether to pursue new permits. NTEC’s spokesperson said that the project partners “will determine next steps based on project planning and permitting.”

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