Tribal governing board members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northwest Wisconsin voted to make May 5 the Tribal Day of Awareness of missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives (MMIW/R) and authorized the creation of the Bad River MMIW/R Task Force on April 22.

All 11 federally recognized Wisconsin tribes participate in the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s MMIW/R Task Force, but Bad River is creating its own tribal task force. On Tuesday, more than 50 members of the Bad River community participated in an annual MMIW/R Awareness walk. They followed a route inside the reservation marked by posters and red dresses (one of the visual symbols of the MMIW/R movement) displayed on hangers hung from garden stakes.

The annual Bad River MMIW/R walk is one of several across North America to raise awareness of the violence, especially murder and disappearance, affecting indigenous people.

Bad River Chair Liz Arbuckle and several members of the task force participated in the Tuesday walk and discussed the newly formed task force.

“When I became chair, this was something I wanted to prioritize,” said Arbuckle. “Violence against our people, particularly women, is catastrophic. It’s a crisis, and we know every tribal community has been affected by it, both on rez and off rez, and so this is a good way for us to educate people about the issue.”

She said the task force has three main goals:

• Education, outreach, and prevention.
• Creating response teams and response plans.
• Preparing for the possibility that the Canadian energy company Enbridge will bring a large workforce for the Line 5 pipeline reroute to the area, creating what has been termed “man camps,” a concentration of male pipeline workers in rural areas, especially tribal areas.

Bad River and environmental groups are challenging the 41-mile Line 5 reroute around the reservation in court, but Arbuckle said the tribe must prepare as if the project will proceed.

“We’ve seen in other communities when there are large groups of men in camps, especially outside of Native reservations, the statistics show that it can be a really dangerous place, because some of these guys have a lot of money and these girls get caught up in that, or people get caught up in that and bad things can happen,” she said, “So we want to make sure we educate people about that and prepare them to make good decisions for themselves.”

A 2021 Guardian article, “Sexual violence along pipeline route follows Indigenous women,” reported that crisis centers noted more than 40 reports of workers on Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement in northern Minnesota were alleged to have harassed and assaulted women and girls. 

In that same article, Michael Barnes, an Enbridge spokesperson, said the corporation has “zero tolerance for illegal behavior by anyone associated with our company or its projects,” and the article also noted the corporation fired two workers charged with sexual/human trafficking.

Another, larger objective of the task force, said Arbuckle, is to create dialogue among local, state and federal agencies to share information and work cooperatively across jurisdiction lines, which is often difficult  when tribal lands are involved.

The task force includes members of social services, legal, public health and law enforcement agencies.

“I thought this is a great group that has different skills and different programs to come after it from different angles,” said Arbuckle.

If there is a crisis or emergency, such as a disappearance, all the preparation and forethought from the task force, said Arbuckle,  will have at least put the tribe in a better position to respond.

“We shouldn’t just start from scratch if someone goes missing,” she said. “We should have a plan. We should know the people. We should have a good relationship with the police or the sheriff.”

Theresa Morris, a community health manager, is a member of the task force, whose goal is to educate members about man camps and encourage members to travel in pairs and to let others know their whereabouts and plans.

Gina Jensen, a health worker who represents the tribe’s police commission, noted one of her motivations for being on the task force is that the murder rate for indigenous women is 10 times the national average.

Aurora Conley, one of the tribal governing board members who voted to approve the task force, said its creation signals the tribe is paying attention and is committed to being proactive and prepared, including networking and working with other tribes, communities and the state.

“I thought it was a beautiful thing, definitely,” Coley said of the task force’s creation, “and to let our community members know that those that have gone missing or murdered in the past have not been forgotten.”

Conley said as a parent of two Indigenous children she feels an obligation to make them aware that they are at higher risk.

“I have a small daughter, and it’s a different sense of awareness that we have to create … it better prepares our children and our communities,” she said.