Indigenous Rights & Tribal Sovereignty

Nationwide, the voices of Indigenous people have united to raise awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girls (MMIWG). Though awareness of the crisis is growing, data on the realities of this violence is scarce.

This report focuses on sexual violence against indigenous women in the USA. Governments have a responsibility to ensure that women are able to enjoy their right to freedom from sexual violence. As citizens of particular tribal nations, the welfare and safety of American Indian and Alaska Native women are directly linked to the authority and […]

When Meskee Yanabah Yatsayte started Navajo Nation Missing Persons Updates seven years ago, she’d never heard of the acronym MMIWG, which stands for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and wasn’t widely used at the time.

Resource extraction takes a toll on more than just the economy and the environment.

The Billings Gazette has continued to examine one of the most urgent issues in Montana and our region — missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

While violence against women plagues many communities across the country and around the world, the Native American indigenous groups in North America are particularly hard struck by this devastating problem. Missing and murdered indigenous women

A program in Washington state is intended to trigger an effective search and raise awareness of the problem

Artist Jaime Black says the REDress Project is an expression of her grief for thousands of Native victims

These are the cases authorities say do not involve foul play

U.S. lawmakers are beginning to grapple with the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Canada’s inquiry suggests the road ahead will be steep.

The death of Gabby Petito draws attention to a form of widespread gendered violence in the US that has long been hiding in plain sight

Gabby Petito’s case highlights the power of media attention but for Indigenous communities it also emphasizes the lack of attention given to missing and murdered Native people

The intentional murder of women because they are women is a problem globally.

It leads to violence against, and the trafficking of, Native women

Attempts to address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis could be counteracted by the problems “man camps” cause for reservation communities.

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The Government of Canada is launching a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

For years, tribal citizens and grass roots organizations sought to bring attention to the issues surrounding missing or murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives. In tribal consultations and listening sessions, tribal leaders, advocates, law enforcement, community members, and others raised concerns about the disappearance or murder of American Indian and Alaska Native people across the United States. Tribes began taking concerted action to address these issues in their communities.

Reclaim, rematriate, and create.

The Red Women Rising Project strives to increase public awareness of domestic violence and sexual assault as it affects Native American women living urban areas. Through development of various resources, tools, media, and technical assistance, Red Women Rising seeks to promote justice and healing for Urban Indian women.

Our women, girls, and two-spirts are being taken from us in an alarming way. As of 2016, the National Crime Information Center has reported 5,712 cases of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. Strikingly, the U.S Department of Justice missing persons database has only reported 116 cases. The majority of these murders are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. The lack of communication combined with jurisdictional issues between state, local, federal, and tribal law enforcement, make it nearly impossible to begin the investigative process.

Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people. SBI is committed to: conducting, supporting, and mobilizing culturally-informed and community-engaged research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people uplifting Indigenous researchers, knowledge keepers, and data visualists in their work to research and disseminate data on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people empowering Indigenous communities and nations to continue their work to end gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people, through data-driven partnerships that enhance research efforts, develop best practices, and transform data to action to protect and heal their peoples. SBI is a home for generating new knowledge and understandings of how Indigenous nations and communities are impacted by gender and sexual violence, and how they may continue to work towards healing and freedom from such violence. In the spirit of building such freedom, SBI is strongly committed to upholding the sovereignty of all bodies Indigenous peoples hold sacred--our physical bodies, nations, land, and water--and does not accept grants from colonial governments or extractive industries. Similarly, SBI’s work is not limited by colonial borders, concepts of gender, politics of identity or recognition, or ways of knowing. SBI honors the epistemologies and lifeways of indigenous peoples, and is bound by accountability to the land, our ancestors, and each other. SBI is fiscally sponsored by Open Collective Foundation.

Our mission is to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in our communities.

Our mission is to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in our communities.

The Sobaípuri-O'odham occupied the San Pedro and Santa Cruz valleys of southern Arizona from the 1400s. Their descendants reside at the contemporary community if Wa:k (San Xavier del Bac). Most of the protohistory and history concerning the Sobaípuri-O'odham has been gleaned from documents written by the early Spanish colonizers and other Europeans and emphasizes the influence of Father Eusebio Kino; there are few accounts of the indigenous people themselves. In recent years, however, archaeological surveys and excavations in southern Arizona have revealed new information about this group. Where the Earth and Sky Are Sewn Together includes these archaeological findings to provide an enhanced interpretation of the Sobaípuri-O'odham lifeway, addressing questions that have been unanswerable by historical documents alone. Seymour considers new methods and theory for tackling the difficulties of working with a sparse archaeological record and proposes some very different answers. This book represents a much revised rendition of the historian's Sobaípuri-O'odham, a people who once dominated southern Arizona's landscape.

"Land Acknowledgements often begin academic conferences, cultural events, government press conferences, and even hockey games. They are supposed to be an act of Reconciliation between Indigenous people in Canada and non-Indigenous Canadians, but they have become so routine and formulaic that they have sometimes lost meaning. Seen more and more as empty words, some events have dropped Land Acknowledgements altogether. Me��tis artist and educator Suzanne Keeptwo wants to change that. She sees the Land Acknowledgement as an opportunity for Indigenous people in Canada to communicate their worldview to non-Indigenous Canadians--a worldview founded upon Age Old Wisdom about how to sustain the Land we all want to call home. For Keeptwo, the Land Acknowledgement is a way to teach and a way to learn: a living, evolving record of First Nation, Me��tis, and Inuit people in Canada and the Land that for millennia they held in pristine condition. As Keeptwo says: "Everything comes back to the Land--as our common denominator and most perfect unifier for Reconciliation." This is an indispensable guide to getting the contemporary Land Acknowledgement right."--

Indigenous cultures are not terra nullius -- nobody's land, free to be taken. True Tracks paves the way for the respectful and ethical engagement with Indigenous knowledges and cultures. Using real-world cases and personal stories, Meriam/Wuthathi lawyer Dr Terri Janke draws on twenty years of professional experience to inform and inspire people working across many industries -- from art and architecture, to film and publishing, dance, science and tourism. What Indigenous materials and knowledge are you using? How will your project affect and involve Indigenous communities? Are your sharing your profits with those communities? True Tracks helps answer these questions and many more, and provides invaluable guidelines that enable Indigenous peoples to actively practise, manage and strengthen their cultural life. If we keep our tracks true, Indigenous culture and knowledge can benefit everyone and empower future generations.

From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us--and how it could unite us Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth--a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.

One of the most outspoken of current Native American activists, Churchill ( Fantasies of the Master Race ) here produces a fine volume of essays devoted to Native peoples' efforts to recover their lost lands and to protect what they have left. Threats to their territories take many forms, including expropriation, flooding for production of hydroelectric power and what Churchill terms ``radioactive colonization,'' whereby Native lands and waters are destroyed through uranium mining. Native resistance varies as well, ranging from legal suits and savvy marshaling of international public opinion to defense by force of arms. Deftly dealing with the situation in both the United States and Canada, Churchill debunks important myths (e.g., that there is a single ethnicity that can encompass all of North America's indigenous peoples). In the final essay, he expounds his version of ``indigenism,'' which he defines as giving the highest political priority to indigenous rights--whether in America, Australia or elsewhere. This is an important contribution to a growing body of work stressing Native sovereignty and self-determination. (Jan.)