Overview
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)
Author: Stephanie Lumsden, PhD (Hupa)
Lesson partner: Rebecca Lowry, Humboldt County Office of Education
Grades: 9-12
Suggested Amount of Time: 45 minutes
Curriculum Themes
- History
- Cultural Strengths
- Law/Government
Learning Goals
Students will:
Understand and define the meaning of MMIW.
Work with a partner to analyze the main point of a short film.
Create useful notes using the note taking handout.
Lesson Overview
This lesson covers sensitive material and should be treated with care. Give ample warning to the students because colonial gender violence is part of this lesson. This lesson introduces students to the historical context and contemporary reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women, or MMIW. Importantly, this lesson focuses on MMIW not as an “epidemic” nor as the cumulative result of a few bad actors. Rather, the lesson treats MMIW as an outcome of structural violence directly related to ongoing U.S. settler-colonial occupation of Indigenous homelands. In this lesson students will participate in active note taking with help of a handout while the teacher presents the slide show and facilitates large class discussion. Students will also watch a short 6 minute film featuring the poem “American Arithmetic” by Mojave poet Natalie Diaz and participate in a think, pair, share activity that will help them process this difficult topic. As the film and Diaz’s poem make clear, police violence against Native people, particularly in California, is a significant element of MMIW and therefore part of this lesson.
Essential Questions:
What does MMIW mean?
Why are Native women and Two-Spirit people targeted for violence?
How do state actors like the police contribute to MMIW?
Students will:
Paraphrase main ideas from the lesson while taking notes.
Analyze a short film featuring Mojave Poet Natalie Diaz’s poem, “American Arithmetic,” by participating in a think, pair & share activity.
Describe MMIW as a result of ongoing settler-colonial occupation.
The teacher must:
Understand that MMIW is a structural issue not an interpersonal one.
Be prepared to actively engage students’ difficult questions and reactions to the sensitive subject matter of the lesson.
Teacher Background
Missing and murdered Indigenous women is a serious contemporary issue for Native nations in the U.S. and Indigenous peoples worldwide. MMIW has a long historical context beginning with the earliest invasion of Native homelands because targeting Native women and children for sexual violence and murder was an integral part of the genocide enacted against them by colonial forces. Native women and Two Spirit people, whose bodies are often treated as symbols of a future for Native nations, are targeted by individual settler citizens for violence, legal political disenfranchisement, extractive economies, and murder by state actors like the police. MMIW is not a problem that can be solved with policies or more policing because colonial gender violence is perpetuated by the law and police. It’s important that students be taught how to engage with violence as a structural and institutional issue so that they can understand the terrible impacts of ongoing settler colonial occupation. Also, teaching about violence against Native women as a structural issue may help students understand how violence has shown up in their own lives and help them avoid self blame.