However, the real human impact goes far beyond statistics. Every day, another Indigenous woman goes missing. Families and communities are torn apart when they lose someone they care about. It is devastating to lose a friend, relative, or community member. Countless Native women across generations have grown up with the fear that they could be assaulted, kidnapped, or murdered simply for being an Indigenous woman. Even young girls are aware of the danger they are in. For them, MMIWG2S is impossible to ignore, yet much of the rest of the country pays little attention to it.

Canada has recognized the crisis of MMIWG2S as a genocide, but the US government has yet to do so. Systemic state violence and the legacies of colonialism and gendered colonial oppression all work to perpetuate this crisis. Institutions that claim to protect the people, such as the police, the legal system, and the entire federal government, fail to do so, and often are active perpetrators of violence. Proportionately, Native people are killed by police more than any other group. They face racist, discriminatory courts when trying to get legal justice for their relatives and community-members, and MMIWG2S are given little media attention.

MMIWG2S is a continuaion of the initial genocide and settler colonialism that founded the United States centuries ago. Since the late 15th century, Indigenous people have been attacked, killed, enslaved, stripped of their lands, forcibly sterilized, sent to reservations and residential schools, and forced to abandon their culture. Today, the legacies of this injustice are ongoing. Voting rights restrictions, the building of environmentally-destructive pipelines in sacred lands, and attempts to overturn policies like the Indian Child Welfare Act all serve as extensions of colonial violence. MMIWG2S exemplifies this along multiple axes of oppression. Colonial racism and gender-based violence intersect to create this crisis. It is not simply violence against women or Native people, but specific violence targeting Native women at the intersections of these identities, along with queer, nonbinary, and Two-Spirit people who also face gender-based oppression. 

It is clear that action is needed. Here at STAND, we stand in solidarity with the Indigenous communities working to protect themselves from systemic racist violence and honor the memory of all MMIWG2S. This list of resources provides hotlines for Indigenous women and all people experiencing violence, relevant government reports and scholarly articles, and a list of organizations currently taking action. You can also attend one of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s virtual events today to learn more or take action to support Indigenous women here. If you want to learn more about the work that STAND does to address atrocities against Indigenous communities, you can sign up for our United States Action Committee here.

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Grace Harris is a second-year International Development Studies major at UCLA who serves as the United States Action Committee Lead for STAND. She is also an Education and Outreach Co-Lead. This is her third year on STAND’s Managing Committee.

This day was previously designated as a commemoration of Chirstopher Columbus’ arrival in the United States. Considering both the atrocities Columbus personally led as well as the ones that he indirectly facilitated, we take this opportunity to stand in solidarity with Indigenous Communities in reclaiming this day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day and hold space for the celebration of the resiliency and beauty that exists within Indigenous culture.

Part of that solidarity is realizing that the harm perpetrated against Indigenous communities did not end with Columbus. The United States has a long and unfortunate legacy of atrocities, specifically against Indigenous peoples, which are unfortunately still impactful, and leave a legacy of inequity today. Notably, residential schools in the U.S. and Canada stand as a significant issue that has begun gaining attention in mainstream news media. The practice of removing Indigenous children from their families and communities and forcibly sending them to residential schools, often operated by the Catholic Church, was fairly commonplace and did not become illegal until 1978. These schools were meant to assimilate thousands of Indigenous children to typical white-American societal norms and sought to alienate Indigenous children from their heritage and cultural practices. Children were required through force and strict rule to speak English exclusively, wear Western rather than traditional clothing, and were often forced to replace their spiritual and religious traditions with Christianity. Children faced significant abuse and harsh physical “discipline,” which has led to lasting trauma, both directly and generationally. There was often inadequate food or medical care, and many people died at these schools. Moreover, family members were typically not informed about the status of their children, or their safety, resulting in many children being buried in unmarked mass graves at the schools, some of which have been recently uncovered both in the U.S. and in Canada. Today, survivors are working together to heal from the immense trauma that they endured and are advocating for the government to support truth and reconciliation initiatives. Indigenous people are still mourning the loss of these individuals and the psychological, societal impacts that these schools have held on this community.

Despite the resilience survivors have shown, the residential schools did lasting damage. Moreover, they are part of a larger cultural genocide that explicitly labeled Indigenous cultures as subhuman and uncivilized.

Policies put into place by the American government have transcended time and have proved to be detrimental to the preservation of Indigenous culture and community. As a result of the residential schools, children were forbidden from speaking their native languages, which has now resulted in extreme amounts of language loss within the various communities. When native languages were prohibited from being spoken, it discouraged a passing on of many traditions, especially in many cultures in which the oral tradition is the main way of sharing knowledge and culture. Language is not just verbal communication, but it is the silences that exist between each word and the feeling behind each sentence. These feelings were prohibited from being passed on, thus leading to a disconnect between generations and personal spiritual connection to culture, religion, and general identity.

In many policies implemented by the American and Canadian governments, Indigenous traditions and culture were wrongfully considered “savage.” Furthermore, the myth that many colonizers perpetuated was that Indigenous peoples were culturally and socially backward or even ignorant to the modern world. However, this narrative is far from reality. Indigenous people had a deep knowledge about the natural world that can not be explained by western science. For so long, Indigenous ideas, lessons, and ideas have been ignored, or looked down upon, leading to a major loss in the world being able to experience the depth of these ideas.

The trauma that generations of Indigenous peoples around the world have experienced resides within the bodies of every descendant of the community. It makes it extremely difficult for these individuals to dismiss the price they have paid for assimilation in a foreign, non-Indigenous society. It is crucial to acknowledge that under the weight of these injustices, hundreds of families, whose stories are yet to be told, have been suppressed into the soil of a land that was once theirs. Moreover, intergenerational trauma felt by the Indigenous community has caused increased susceptibility to feelings of shame and inferiority about identity, culture, and traditions. For many people in Indigenous communities, there is a shared experience of growing up in spaces that do not recognize or bring reconciliation for the trauma that their families experienced, that they experienced, or the ways in which their community has been impacted by these issues as well. It is imperative to recognize that continuing to ignore or dismiss the pain that these communities face will continue to hurt generations in the future. Moreover, it is vital that we encourage discussion around this issue, advocate for reconciliation, and work to preserve this cultural heritage for the individuals that are closest to the issue, as well as for the preservation of centuries of knowledge, wisdom, and genuine history.

This loss of culture and intergenerational trauma is not isolated to the United States. It has been seen with Aborigines in Australia, many ethnic groups in Burma, the Uyghurs in East Turkistan, and people who have faced colonization around the world. It is apparent that Indigenous people across the world are facing issues of preservation at the hands of atrocity and ignorance. Therefore we as allies, community members, and advocates need to stand together to learn, educate, and celebrate Indigenous people. Join us, and the larger scope of Indigenous communities by taking some time to learn about the history of Indigenous peoples beyond Columbus, and reflect on how you can support Indigenous communities today.

Join the United States Action Committee to work on these issues with STAND.

When Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes was elected president of Guatemala in 1958, he led a degrading and racist campaign against Mayans (who he called “mountain dwellers”), encouraging members of the military to torture, rape, and kill Mayans. Due to discrimination against Mayan women, a group of both Guatemalan and Mayan men planned a coup to eliminate Fuentes from office. The coup ultimately failed, but catalyzed the Guatemalan Civil War that took place from 1960 to 1996. During this civil war, many Mayans rebelled and were named “internal enemies” by the government. Various social movements in the 1960s reflected a national demand for “land and fair wages in the Mayan highlands and large farms of the south coast.” When the Spanish embassy, holding 39 Mayan leaders, was burned to the ground, armed insurgencies sprouted up under the name “Guatemala National Revolutionary Unit.” They established four main guerrilla groups that attacked national security forces and sabotaged economic activities. The government used these actions to justify their call for their extermination. Approximately 200,000 Mayans were killed during the war.

Though prior to this period there had been periodic killings, the “Silent Holocaust” of 1981-1983 resulted in the most deaths. In 1982, General Efraín Ríos Montt became head of state and led a  scorched earth campaign  against the Mayan people. In the 17 months of his military rule, soldiers hunted down leftist guerrillas in Mayan highlands and systematically killed Mayans – civilians and combatants alike. Racist propaganda was spread, portraying Mayans as primitive and blaming them for the scarcity of agricultural products in the country. Some of the people that carried out these attacks proudly called themselves “killing machines.” Most Mayans killed were not part of guerilla movements, but were teachers, farmers, university and high school students, and other civilians. Women were raped, tortured, and killed, and even children and the elderly were targeted by the government.

According to The Center for Justice and Accountability, “between 500,000 and 1.5 million Mayan civilians fled to other regions within the country or became refugees abroad from 1981-1983 alone.” In 1983, Ríos Montt was deposed in a coup, and in 1986, a government formed by the Guatemalan people created a new constitution. Although the constitution included articles acknowledging the existence of Mayans and their traditions, and another article established law for regulations of indigenous peoples – the laws were not enacted nearly 10 years after the fact. In June 1994, the government signed a Commision for Historical Clarification with the UN and agreed to investigate the genocide.

After the results of the commission’s investigation were released, Ríos Montt was arrested and convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. However, two weeks after his conviction, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court annulled the conviction. Although he was supposed to face trial again in 2015, he was declared mentally unfit and the trial was suspended until 2016. In 2017, the Guatemalan National Court declared that he could face trial for the Dos Erres Massacre. During the Dos Erres Massacre, members of the Guatemalan military’s Kaibil Unit killed approximately 300 residents of a village called Dos Erres. Many different organizations, such as the Open Society Justice Initiative, have expressed the need for Ríos Montt to face trial again by working with Mayans who are willing to share their stories and testimony.

Today, Guatemalans continue to advocate for justice for those whose lives were tragically taken, and for education about Guatemala’s civil war. Antonia Caba Caba, a man who grew up in a Mayan village during the military raids and was forced into the military, says he wants Americans to “be more understanding when the economic hardship of today forces Guatemalans to flee, yet again, and to try to find a life across the US border.” As one of the least known but bloodiest civil wars of Latin American history, the Guatemalan Civil War’s legacy still resonates with Guatemalans today, who continue to seek justice for the lives lost.

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Erica Yeagley is a junior at Terre Haute South Vigo High School in Indiana. She is a member of the STAND chapter at her school and enjoys volunteering throughout her community.