The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Database
In the US, murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian women, the rate of rape on some reservations can be ten times higher than the national average, and Native women and girls are highly overrepresented in cases of missing persons (for example, in Montana, Native people make up 8% of the state population, and yet 40% of the state’s missing girls are Native). A complex maze of jurisdictional policies and institutionalized violence means much of this violence is not only not addressed, but not documented.
The database works to address the lack of data, by maintaining a comprehensive resource to support community members, advocates, activists, and researchers in their work towards justice for our stolen sisters. There are currently over 2,600 cases in the database, though we estimate that we are missing over 20,000 more. Filing records requests has allowed us to access some of the historic data that is not easily found online, and fill in those gaps in data. It has also helped us in advocating for changes in law enforcement protocol regarding MMIW cases, better data management practices on violence against indigenous women, and even new additional research projects aimed at preventing future violence. Please help us continue that work by contributing to funding to support continued records requests!
For more information on the database, please see our website, at mmiwdatabase.com. You may also contact us directly at mmiwdatabase@gmail.com.
The database has been built and maintained by Annita Lucchesi, a Southern Cheyenne doctoral student. Annita is a survivor of domestic and sexual violence, and is doing her dissertation research on community projects mapping this data. For more information about Annita, visit her website at annitalucchesi.com.
1 Article
Requester’s Voice: The Sovereign Bodies Institute’s Annita Lucchesi
Annita Lucchesi, a doctoral student and freelance cartographer, has filed extensive FOIA requests to create the first centralized database on missing and murdered indigenous women. Lucchesi shared her experiences navigating a system that refuses to keep track of this data.
101 Requests
Completed
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Wisconsin Department of Justice of Wisconsin
Fix Required
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Montana Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation of Montana
No Responsive Documents
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Division of Criminal Investigation of Wyoming
No Responsive Documents
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Utah Highway Patrol of Utah
No Responsive Documents
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Division of Corrections of West Virginia
No Responsive Documents
Sovereign Bodies Institute sent this request to the Berkeley Police Department of Berkeley, CA