The Number of Missing and Murdered Native Women in Montana is Heartbreaking
32 indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing in Montana between January and September of 2018.
An east coast friend recently reached out to me with a link to this short film, a film that I've seen dozens of times in my Facebook feed. He said he was shocked, and that people back east had no idea this was a major issue in our Native American communities.
It's not just people back east, or from other states who don't know; residents right here in Montana have no idea that Native communities are suffering from a growing number of missing and murdered girls and women.
As a Native woman whose cousin and hero was murdered at the age of 16, I learned as a child, that outside their own families, nobody really cares when Indian women die. There was no investigation about my cousin. To me, it felt like the local police said, "Oh well, just another dead Indian." That was years ago, but have things changed?
For those who are aware of the growing number of missing and murdered Indian women in Montana, we are left feeling helpless. What do we do about it? How can we help? How can we prevent this from continuing?
Please watch the film above to learn more, and stay tuned. I will have guests from the film in the studio to answer our questions about how we can help, and what the next step is to prevent the number of missing and murdered Indian women in Montana from being the norm for the next generation.
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