This is a People's History of Native America.
With me, Tai Leclaire.
And today
we're going to talk about the missing
and murdered Indigenous peoples
crisis, or MMIP.
The MMIP
crisis and movement is raising awareness
to the alarmingly high rates of murders
and missing cases of Native women.
In America,
homicide is the third leading cause of death
amongst Native girls and women aged
1 to 44, and more than half
of Indigenous women experience sexual violence.
Even though Native Americans
are only 2.5%
of the US population,
Native women are ten times
more likely to be murdered than any other ethnicity.
But did you know it all began with a cartoon
most of us grew up watching?
Pocahontas.
Yeah, that's right,
the Disney cartoon.
As a kid,
I always loved Disney's Pocahontas
because it was the only
representation we had on TV.
It was so popular
I, too, thought I could talk to trees
and animals.
But I know every rock and tree
and creature
has a life, has a spirit.
But the only true thing about this movie is this:
these white men are dangerous.
Disney claimed
that Pocahontas was its first animated film
“inspired by a real life figure.”
And while Pocahontas did exist,
her real story has more to do with the
MMIP crisis
than falling in love with a settler.
In fact,
Disney's attempt to create a cartoon
princess about “people
getting along together”
is more destructive
to the Indigenous narrative,
especially once you know that Pocahontas
was actually kidnapped,
raped, and murdered.
Pocahontas’
tribe was the Pamunkey
located in present day Virginia.
Her real name was Amonute,
but once colonization hit,
she became the first case
of the MMIP crisis
an epidemic that is plaguing
almost every Indigenous community
on the continent.
Unlike Disney's love story,
the real tale of Pocahontas and John Smith is defined
by cruelty at the hands of not only Smith,
but his entire merry
troupe of settlers.
In Disney, there was only one John.
But in reality, there were two johns.
After enduring years
of captivity under Smith,
Pocahontas was forcibly wed
to the other John, John Rolfe.
She was captured
for the purpose of sexual
and economic exploitation,
later having a son with Rolfe.
When her and Rolfe made it to England,
she was poisoned at the age of 22.
She never made it home
and her body remains in Europe
while her descendants still live in Virginia
to this day.
What Pocahontas’ story tells us
is that the MMIP crisis back then
and today is a direct result of the
colonization of the Americas.
Wait, but why am
I explaining a woman's experience?
Am I mansplaining?
What I need to do
is find a Native woman expert.
Are there any around?
Ah-ha, of course there are!
I just found one on Google.
That was easy.
The part that I hate the most
about this gig:
emailing those with a Ph.D.
Dear Cristina,
I may not be a woman, wait no.
Okay?
Although I’m a
man who needs a woman?
Definitely no.
I'm looking for someone that can help me fill the gaps
in my knowledge about the MMIP crisis.
What do I know
about the current MMIP crisis?
When we cover
protests, you always see a group of women
carrying missing and murdered
Indigenous women and girls signs.
Homicide is the third leading cause of death
for American Indian girls.
Dear Cristina,
The tragic violence that Indigenous women
and girls have experienced
amounts to genocide.
I'm researching the MMIP crisis. Even though
MMIW is a movement
that was started in Canada,
women in Indian Country
have been going missing for a long time.
Being a Native person from the land now
called Canada myself,
Thousands and
thousands of women turning up missing or
murdered. Every year.
This ongoing tragedy is extremely close to my heart.
American Indian women are ten times
more likely to be murdered.
I want to make sure that the information
I present is accurate.
This is absolutely genocidal.
Our women have been going
missing since 1492.
Dear Tai,
Sure.
Call me whenever.
Here we go.
Hey, Cristina.
Hey, Tai.
What are some of the factors that are leading
to the disappearance and death
on Indian Reservations?
Precedent was set 500 years ago
with Pocahontas.
That if you rape, murder,
kill an Indigenous woman,
then you're going to get away with it.
And it may even make you a hero
throughout history for doing that.
In 1978, the Supreme Court decided
a case called Oliphant
versus Suquamish.
And the Supreme Court
ruled that non-Indians
cannot be prosecuted
on tribal lands.
So that gives license
to anyone who is not Native
and considered
Native women expendable
because they know they're not going to get caught.
But what I don't want to do is
I don't want to say
that we are only ever victims.
Right?
We are again, we are still here.
It amazes me that we are still here
in the face of all of this.
What has been done
to solve this problem?
So we are taking steps
to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore.
But we also need our
sovereignty to be strengthened.
Tribes have been able to get grants
through the Violence Against Women Act
to create our own programs.
Things that we know
help will help our own people,
because all tribes are very different
and what's happening in different
reservations are different.
And a lot of tribes don't have reservations.
Why is this issue been underreported
for so long?
So I did a study
on how federal recognition in tribes
is portrayed in the in the media.
And in 40 years,
there were only 4,000 stories
of federal recognition.
And actually, there are only 20 stories
in 40 years in broadcast news.
And so when people don't hear
these stories, they don't know about them.
And so it's so much easier
to perpetuate the stereotypes.
And then the stories that do come out
are the same stories:
they’re about poverty,
about drunkenness,
about welfare.
And it doesn't give the depth
of what's happening in Indian Country.
And so it's really easy
to miss the story
about Missing and Murdered
Indigenous People
because people just don't know outside.
Unless, unless
the outside knows,
then it's really hard
for us to change anything
because then people don't believe us.
Thank you, Cristina.
Tragically, today,
there are thousands of stories
like Pocahontas out there:
Indigenous women
who have been ripped from their homes
and from those who love them and need them.
Many Native
women today have to navigate the justice system
between four distinct jurisdictions
tribal, municipal,
state and federal.
The numbers further
expose this tragedy.
Four out of five
Native American women experience violence.
One out of three will be raped.
86% of these
rapes are by non-Native men.
So when Disney marketed Pocahontas
as a love story based on real events
and released the film to mark
her 400th birthday,
it capitalized off a tragic story
that completely ignored the reality of a courageous
Native woman who suffered
way too cruel of fate.
One of the most powerful things
taken away from Pocahontas
was her agency,
and a distorted version
of her legacy lives on.
Although we can never give
a voice back to all of the MMIP out there,
we can change how society values
Native American women.
That evolution
can only begin with the telling
of the real story of Pocahontas,
the most famous missing Native
American woman in history.
It's become a new thing for
us to control our own image.
It's about representing ourselves
the way we see ourselves.
What we build is
grounded in our songs,
our language, our ceremonies.
We're engineers.
We're doctors.
We are doing things to make a difference
in this world.
Our legacy will continue.