Valentine’s Day marked the second Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s March in places across the U.S. and Canada. Hundreds marched in downtown Rapid City to draw attention to high numbers of Native Women that face violence.
Participants wore red to signify the their cause. They circled the downtown blocks singing and reading the names of Native women reported missing or murdered.
Sunny Red Bear is an organizer of the event. She says Indigenous women everywhere, including Rapid City, are victimized in high numbers.
“Four out of Five Native Women will experience violence in their lifetime. There’s overwhelming under reporting for missing and murdered Indigenous women. The big thing that we want to do with these marches is to create awareness within our community. There’s so many people within our community that have no idea this epidemic is happening. And because Native people are such a large portion of this population, we’re a big part of this community, this is our ancestral lands, we just feel like this is a good time to have some tough conversations about thing that are happening.”
Red Bear says state, local and federal governments should be part of taking action for Native women. She says recent initiatives like historical trauma training in the Rapid City Police Department are a step in the right direction. Red bear says issues like domestic violence can lead to women being murdered or reported missing.
"We want to create accountability within our own communities, within our own families to lead the way in treating our women the way that they need to be treated and they deserve to be treated. I do believe that a lot of the missing and murdered Indigenous women stems from levels of abuse that can be completely layered weather that’s in the home or weather that’s in, like communal or economically. So those all have a part that lead and stem to missing and murdered Indigenous women.”
She says there are over 100 cases in the Black Hills, but the numbers can be hard to gather since so many remain unreported. A database for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women recently started collecting numbers to help get an accurate estimate.