OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A Fox Valley community came together to talk about preventing domestic and sexual violence on Wednesday.
In Oshkosh, the Take Back the Night event spotlighted the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
As of 2018, there are 23 cases of murdered Indigenous women and girls in the Wisconsin DOJ database dating back to 1997. A third of those murders happened here in Northeast Wisconsin. But advocates say not all cases are accounted for in government databases.
Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls are personal to Oneida woman Kanataloloks Zacarias Skenandore.
“We do have a few people that we know that were missing and murdered Indigenous women, they fall under that tragic category.”
She tells FOX 11 one of those women was a childhood friend who lived in Canada.
“She was actually pregnant when she was murdered and was missing, so that was the first one that came to mind when my mom told me about the song she wrote.”
Zacarias Skenandore performed her mother’s honor song for the first time at Take Back the Night. The song honors missing and murdered Indigenous women and translates to “We pray her mind is at peace, and that our creator is watching over them.”
The National Crime Information Center had 5,712 cases of missing Indigenous women and girls reported in their database in 2016. The U.S. Department of Justice’s missing person database had only 116 cases logged in the same year.
“We the Indigenous community, we’re tired of being dismissed,” Renee Gralewicz, a professor of anthropology and Indigenous studies at the UW-Oshkosh Fox Cities Campus said.
Gralewicz tells FOX 11 missing and murdered Indigenous people are treated differently.
“When somebody goes missing, oftentimes we hear from the police ‘Oh they’re on a bender, she’s a prostitute making money, they’re on drugs.’ As if that’s an excuse to not investigate,” Gralewicz said.
She said that’s why many Indigenous cases go unreported.
“Most of the time, like a lot of assault victims, we’re not going to go forward. We know you’re not going to do anything, why would I go forward?”
Gralewicz helped write a bill alongside Reach Counseling Outreach Advocate Lisa Hurst to create a statewide missing and murdered Indigenous women task force.
“I want policies and programs that really can address the level of violence and not just for Indigenous people,” Gralewicz said.
Zacarias Skenandore said something has to be done to keep women and girls safe.
“I have five daughters of my own, so it’s something we need to bring more awareness to for all the Indigenous women.”
The task force could start working in January if the bill is approved. It could make recommendations to prevent violence in Indigenous communities by December 2020.
