Please join us as we welcome Chelsea Trillo, program coordinator with Sovereign Bodies Institute, and Jaclyn Bissonette. Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people.
SBI has developed and maintains a database that logs cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and two-spirit people, from 1900 to the present.
The database works to address the chronic lack of data on this violence by maintaining a comprehensive resource to support those in their work towards justice for our stolen sisters.
The talk will be followed by a Q&A.
League members are invited to register for this Zoom presentation.
Everyone is invited to watch live on YouTube.
Sponsored by LWVEA, Long Red Line, and AAUW Elgin Area (IL) Branch.
Native American women across the country are being murdered and sexually assaulted on reservations and nearby towns at far higher rates than other American women. Their assailants are often white and other non-Native American men outside the jurisdiction of tribal law enforcement.
In some U.S. counties composed primarily of Native American lands, murder rates of Native American women are up to 10 times higher than the national average for all races, according to a study for the U.S. Department of Justice by sociologists at the University of Delaware and University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
Other possible victims have never been found. As of 2016, there were 5,712 cases of missing Native American women reported to the National Crime Information Center.
“The numbers are likely much higher because cases are often under-reported and data isn’t officially collected,” said the U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, who has introduced legislation to improve how law enforcement keeps track of missing and murdered indigenous women.”