The COVID-19 global pandemic exposes the current crisis of MMIWGP. We will still have speakers and performers and discuss things we need to do here in NC.

The Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Coalition of North Carolina (MMIW NC) has examined the relationships among local, state, county, tribal, and federal supportive and responsive systems, gaps in services, and barriers to care in North Carolina that contribute to violence against American Indian women, girls, and two-spirit. There are gaps in coverage due to databases not having racial categories for American Indian women to select what race they belong to, jurisdictional battles that occur when reservation residents are discovered or reported missing elsewhere, and tribes’ inability to exercise sovereignty and prosecute violent crimes such as rape.

The MMIW NC Coalition is dedicated to creating a statewide initiative to convince the North Carolina General Assembly, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, the governor of North Carolina. The Commission of Indian Affairs provides a database for the monitoring or public reporting of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and creates a task response responsible for gathering the data. Currently, no comprehensive, accessible, cross-jurisdictional database exists to record missing American Indian women in North Carolina. May 5, marks the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The absence of consistent, standardized reporting on the issue has prevented researchers from gaining a true understanding of the problem.

Shining a light on all the causes of violence, murders, and disappearances is a daunting task.

But it is necessary.

We are exposing grim truths about the devastating impacts of colonization, racism, and sexism