Three members of the Wisconsin Murdered, Missing, Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR) Task Force who attended a May 4 commemoration in Ashland were (from left) Justine Rufus, chair of the task force and a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Rose Barber of Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Rene Goodwich, a Bad River Tribal member. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

Linda Dunbar, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and marginalized Communities advocate for New Day Advocacy Centers, said when she was in foster care 50 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota, her mother was murdered and her killer was never charged.

Rose Barber, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a Wisconsin Murdered, Missing, Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR) Task Force Member, and president of American Indians Against Abuse, said decades ago, an Alaskan Native friend went missing and his body was never found. Even today, nobody knows what happened to him.

After a round dance performed by the Red Cliff Women’s Hand Drum group, dozens of names were read of tribal members from Minnesota and Wisconsin who are officially listed as murdered or missing, names such as Melissa Beson of Lac du Flambeau, missing since March 17, Gene J. Cloud, Jr. of Black River Falls, Lisa Lynn Ninham of Menominee County and Nevaeh Leigh Kingbird of Bemidji, Minnesota.

And then more names were shouted out, names that had never been officially reported but who family members said had just disappeared and were never heard from again or who died a mysterious death.

The names were honored at the No More MMWIR event, which was held Sunday, May 4, in Bayview Park in Ashland by the shore of Lake Superior.

The event is one of several being held around the nation during the month of May to raise awareness of the MMIWR issue that has plagued tribal communities nationwide. On some tribal reservations, the murder rate for tribal women is ten times the national average. Tribal members face violence, both domestic and outside their families, at a higher rate than the general population. Several factors contribute to the MMIWR phenomenon including the fact that missing people belong to a vulnerable population that has suffered historical trauma and is disproportionately affected by poverty and substance abuse; exploitation associated with itinerant workers in mining and oil camps near reservations; and an inconsistent track record of law enforcement committing resources to solve murders or finding missing person.

Justine Rufus, co-chair of the Wisconsin MMIWR Task Force, rural coordinator of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and a Bad River member, spoke about the need for state funding to address the issue.

Rufus said that since the task force was created five years ago, awareness of the MMIWR issue has grown, but the number of MMIWR cases has also risen.

“We can keep creating awareness and education, which is very important,” she said. “What we really need is actual action to address this crisis. Our relatives are going missing at higher rates now since we created this task force. We are being murdered at higher rates. We are being sex trafficked higher than we’ve ever seen, so it takes real action.”

Rufus said no state has designated dollars for the MMIWR issue in its budget. (Minnesota sends a percentage of license plate fees to underwrite its MMIWR Office, part of the Department of Public Safety.)

She noted that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed budget includes $3.5 million to create 11 MMIWR liaison offices with the 11 tribes in the state, working with the Attorney general and the Department of Justice.

“I applaud Gov. Evers for putting this in the budget,” she said. “He’s the first governor in the nation to put any dollars towards this crisis. But now is the time of action. We need to call your legislators to tell them that we demand to continue this work.”

Rufus also called for more funding for law enforcement. “Some of our communities don’t even have law enforcement,” she said. She noted the ongoing search for Melissa Beson in Vilas County has consumed many resources.

Rufus encouraged the crowd to contact legislative Joint Finance Committee members to urge them to approve funding for MMIWR issues.

Rene Ann Goodrich, a Bad River tribal member and MMIWR advocate for the last 10 years, who is a member of the Wisconsin MMIWR Task Force and a board member of the Minnesota MMIWR Office, a member of the Native Lives Matter Coalition and the No More MMIW and Relatives Movement, noted the local effort in the Twin Ports area of Superior and Duluth, Minnesota to raise awareness.

She said MMIWR events feature important Native American elements.

“I wanted to share a little bit about some of the cultural practices that we bring as a people to the contemporary missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives movement that helps to promote the healing for our families and our communities.”

She noted the cultural practice of offering tobacco and prayers to request guidance. And she talked about how the red dress had become the official symbol of the MMIWR movement. For Native Americans, red represents a “connection between the physical and spiritual world.”

“The red dresses began with our sisters doing this work and advocacy for lost loved ones up in Canada, and so we’ve started the work down here about 10 years ago with the red dresses,” she said, “so we’re asking for communities from Minnesota to Wisconsin to please start hanging out those red dresses and hang out red shirts also, because our men, our boys, our two spirits people, they matter, too, and we want to honor them.”

For many tribal people who had dealt with historical trauma, including the legacy of family members being shipped to federal boarding schools, Goodrich said, it is difficult to talk about the MMIWR issue but the red dress or red shirt is a way to raise awareness.

“I understand that it’s a difficult topic, and it’s very difficult for many of us to be able to speak about this movement, this legacy of trauma, this intergenerational trauma that we do carry,” she said. “So the red dresses are a quiet form of advocacy. They speak for themselves. Hang out a red dress on your porch; hang it in your yard. You’re spreading awareness that way. You don’t necessarily need to have all the data or the background, but this is a quiet, honoring form of advocacy that everyone can do.”

Goodrich noted that she and her granddaughter, Alexis, were gathering names family members wanted to honor, including those who have not been officially recognized as missing or murdered.

“As we become more educated and more familiar about this epidemic and how it impacts us, Indigenous people disproportionately across Turtle Island (Earth), leaving us with this legacy, including the boarding school, the legacy from this colonization, how this violence disproportionately impacts our women and our girls …  we’re learning more each year about the broad spectrum of violence that is this movement,” said Goodrich. 

Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) represents a district that includes the Bad River and Red Cliff bands of Lake Superior Chippewa.

“We know that part of what makes this such a major issue that has been so difficult to solve as a country, as a state, is that we’ve just failed to make missing and murdered Indigenous people a priority,” said Stroud.

“My experience tells me that when native people are struggling, too often there’s a tendency for systems of power to have an attitude that it’s not our problem, like it’s a problem of tribes or just the problem of local communities,” she added.

Stroud said the legacy of state violence and the scourges of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, homicide and human trafficking are connected. 

She called on people living on ceded Native American land to recognize  “the moral responsibility of our government to prioritize missing and murdered Indigenous people.”

“So as the state representative of this area of Bad River and Red Cliff and any other indigenous people who live in the 73rd, I want you to know that I care, that I see you, and I will do what I can to walk this journey with you of finding those who are missing and sitting together in the pain of those who are gone,” she said.

Dunbar noted that the Red Cliff Women’s Hand Drum Group, performing for the event, had formed to support the community, and each woman had made her own hand drum as part of her spiritual quest.

“These women wanted to come today and sing songs for everyone here for healing and for their own healing,” she said.

Those who are left behind after a family member goes missing or is murdered have a need to heal, Dunbar said, and she recounted her own experience.

“People ask me why I am so motivated to work on the MMIWR issue,” she said. “When I was a little girl, my mother was killed in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They never, ever arrested the person who killed her. They took her body and placed it in a grave, and for some 50 years my family has been looking for her grave, and as the Creator would have it, this past fall we were able to find her grave. Most of my brothers have passed on. There are only three of us left out of nine. And so our nieces and our nephews and our grandchildren are going to journey to her grave this spring to do that ceremony to welcome her home.”

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