Murders and disappearances of Native American women have risen to prominence lately, inspiring protests and vigils around Montana and legislation in both Helena and Washington, D.C.
There’s broad consensus that improving data access is vital to helping law enforcement solve cold cases. Existing studies have shown Native women face far higher rates of violence than their non-Native counterparts, a problem that’s been variously attributed to racism, insufficient resources, jurisdictional gaps between law enforcement agencies, and other factors. But as Annita Lucchesi began researching this issue while a master’s student in American Studies at Washington State University, she found the underlying data lacking..
“The more I looked, the messier it got,” the Southern Cheyenne researcher told an audience in Polson on Monday, describing how the MMIW Database came to be. This database now logs thousands of cases of murdered and missing indigenous people throughout the Americas, and she sees a variety of ways it could stem this trend.
While databases exist, she said, “they all collect different kinds of things and so if you’re trying to make sense of this issue, you’re going to look at 50 different places (and) the more confused you’re going to get.”