Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are victims of violence against Indigenous women in Canada and the United States, of those in the First Nations in Canada and Native American communities, but also amongst other Indigenous peoples, such as in Australia and New Zealand. A grassroots movement raises awareness of MMIWG through marches, building and maintaining records of the missing, holding meetings, and domestic violence training and other informational sessions for police.

Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities in both the US and Canada have tried to raise awareness of the connection between sex trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the women who go missing and are murdered. From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for Indigenous women in Canada was almost six times higher than that for other women. In Nunavut, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, this overrepresentation of Indigenous women among homicide victims has been even higher, in part due to the larger Indigenous populations in these provinces and territories. In the US, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic; one in three Indigenous women are sexually assaulted during their life; 55.5% are violently assaulted by an intimate partner; 66.4% have experienced psychological aggression from an intimate partner; and 67% of assaults reported involve non-Indigenous perpetrators, while 70% of assaults go unreported.

MMIWG has been described as a Canadian national crisis, and a Canadian genocide. In response to repeated calls from Indigenous groups, activists, and non-governmental organizations, the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with the support of all ten provincial governments, established a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016. According to the inquiry's backgrounder, "Indigenous women and girls in Canada are disproportionately affected by all forms of violence. Although Indigenous women make up 4 per cent of Canada's female population, 16 per cent of all women murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012 were Indigenous." The inquiry was completed and presented to the public on June 3, 2019. Notable MMIWG cases in Canada include 19 women killed in the Highway of Tears murders, and some of the 49 women from the Vancouver area murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton.

In the US, the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized in 2013, which for the first time gave tribes jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute felony domestic violence offenses involving both Native American offenders as well as non-Native offenders on reservations. In 2019, the House of Representatives, led by the Democratic Party, passed H.R.1585 (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) by a vote of 263–158, which would have further increased tribes' prosecution rights. The bill was not taken up by the Senate, which at the time had a Republican majority. In 2022, reauthorization became law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022.