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Lessons of indigeneity’ – Seminar on The Sami (Norway) and the Adivasis (India) 29-30 November

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Lessons of indigeneity’ – Seminar on The Sami (Norway) and the Adivasis (India) 29-30 November

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https://www.nica-institute.com/lessons-of-indigeneity-seminar/

Contact and registration: s.bala@uva.nl

Location: International Institute of Social Studies, Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague

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Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)

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Event | 'Lessons of indigeneity' - Seminar on The Sami (Norway) and the Adivasis (India)
Dates: November 29-30, 2022.
Location: International Institute of Social Studies, Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague
Organizers: Richard Toppo, Scruti Bala
Contact & Registration: s.bala@uva.nl
Registration Deadline: November 1st, 2022
Credits: 2 ECTS

The two-day seminar at the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague brings together indigenous community representatives from the state of Jharkhand in Central-Eastern India and from the Sami community in Norway. Each of these communities has been involved in longstanding struggles against systemic violence, marginalization, displacement, exploitation and 'mainstreaming'. They have also been collectively working in their relevant contexts to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage against erasure, as well as strengthen cultural resources and indigenous knowledge systems. The seminar seeks to create a forum for learning from and with indigenous community representatives from two vastly different settings. It will facilitate crucial conversations between indigenous community representatives from India and Norway, about their victories, failures, organizational and mobilizational strategies, and their engagements with the State and neoliberal structures. It forms the first leg of a journey, which will be continued in Oslo, and which serves as a preparatory visit for a planned future solidarity delegation of indigenous communities to India.

From an academic viewpoint, this seminar seeks to continue the conversations and learning between and across indigenous communities from different parts of the world, especially the role of culture and language in grassroots resistance strategies. It also aims to find out how the academic community can learn to be a (self-)critical ally, foregrounding conceptual and theoretical positionings in conversation with marginalized communities and activists.

Guest speakers

Dayamani Barla, long-standing indigenous rights and human rights activist in Jharkhand/India

Rose Xaxa, Indigenous and Forest Rights activist, Jan Sangharsh Samiti (People's Struggles Association), Jharkhand/India

Tuula Sharma Vassvik, advisor to Norway Museum Association (Norges Museumsforbund) and works in collaboration with University of Tromsø.

N.N., Noereh organization of Sami youth, Oslo/Norway

Moderation: Richard Toppo (PhD Candidate, ISS) and Sruti Bala (Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam)
Programme

First Panel at the ISS

' Knowing each other: The Indian Adivasis and the Sami communities of Sweden/Norway'
Date: November 29th, 2022
Time: 11:00 - 16:00
Location: Aula B

11.00 - 13.00

Introduction (Isha Savani)
Documentary on Sami community (45 min.)
Experiences of Sami community representatives followed by Q&A
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch
14.00 - 16.00

Introduction (Richard Toppo)
Documentary on Neterhaat Movement ('Kis ki Raksha', dir. Shri Prakash, 1994)
Experiences of Adivasi communities in Jharkhand/India followed by Q&A

The second part of the seminar will be assisted by translators.
Moderation: Richard Toppo

Second Panel at the ISS

' Learning from each other: Conversing from experiences'
Date: November 30th, 2022
Time: 10:00-12:00
Location: Aula B

A moderated conversation with all four panelists (two from India and two from Norway).Issues for discussion include indigenous knowledge systems, their systemic erasure and how they are preserved; strategies of resistance, and the role of culture and language in indigenous resistance; models of self-governance and collective mobilization.
This session will be assisted by translators.
Moderation: Sruti Bala and Richard Toppo
Credits for students

Research MA students can obtain 2 EC for this seminar, upon the condition of full attendance of both days, completion of preparatory readings, preparing questions for discussion with guest speakers, and a 1000-word written reflection.

Assignments are not graded but students receive individual feedback.

Registration deadline 1 Nov 2022: s.bala@uva.nl

Preparation

Complete the following readings and send 2-3 questions you would like to ask the speakers to s.bala@uva.nl on or before 28 Nov 2022.

Dungdung, Gladson. Mission Saranda. A War for Natural Resources in India. Ranchi: Deshaj Prakashan, 2015 (read: Foreword by Felix Padel and Introduction)

Buhre, Frida and Collin Bjork. "Braiding Time: Sami Temporalities for Indigenous Justice", Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 51:3 (2021): 227-236, DOI:10.1080/02773945.2021.1918515

Further reading

Kujur, Jerome and Isha Savani. "Indigenous Peoples' Resistance against a Military Firing Range in India: Protecting Our Waters, Forests, and Lands," Cultural Survival, 15 July 2022, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/indigenous-peoples-resistance-against-military-firing-range-india-protecting-our-waters.

Nilsen, Alf Gunvald. Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Naum, Magdalena, and Jonas M. Nordin, eds. Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.

Toppo, Richard. "Adivasis and the Indian State: Beyond access, educational institutes must be sensitive towards cultural differences, prevent positioning of tribals as inferiors," First Post, 17 September 2019, https://www.firstpost.com/india/adivasis-and-the-indian-state-beyond-access-educational-institutes-must-be-sensitive-towards-cultural-differences-prevent-positioning-of-tribals-as-inferiors-7356341.html

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'Lessons of indigeneity' - Seminar on The Sami (Norway) and the Adivasis (India)

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Event | 'Lessons of indigeneity' - Seminar on The Sami (Norway) and the Adivasis (India) Dates: November 29-30, 2022. Location: International Institute of Social Studies, Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague Organizers: Richard Toppo, Scruti Bala Contact & Registration: s.bala@uva.nl Registration Deadline: November 1st, 2022 Credits: 2 ECTS The two-day seminar at the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague brings together indigenous community representatives from the state of Jharkhand in Central-Eastern India and from the Sami community in Norway.

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Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is the first game developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native people. Nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers and community members contributed to the development of the game. Play as a young Iñupiat girl and an arctic fox as they set out to find the source of the eternal blizzard which threatens the survival of everything they have ever known.

Guide both characters in single-player mode or play cooperatively with a friend or family member as you trek through frozen tundra, leap across treacherous ice floes, swim through underwater ice caverns, and face numerous enemies both strange and familiar in the journey to save the girl's village.

In this atmospheric puzzle platformer, you will explore awe-inspiring environments, perform heroic deeds, and meet legendary characters from Iñupiaq stories - all narrated by a master storyteller in the spoken Iñupiaq language.

Play as both Nuna and Fox - Switch between the two companions at any time with one button press, or play side by side in local co-op mode, as you rely on the unique skills of each character to succeed in your quest. Nuna can climb ladders and ropes, move heavy obstacles, and throw her bola at targets to solve puzzles. Fox can fit through small areas that Nuna can't reach, scramble up walls, and jump to great heights.

Brave the harsh world of the Arctic - Run under, through, and atop the unstable structures of an abandoned coastal village. Explore the eerily quiet treetops of a mysterious, iced-over forest. Brave the fierce winds of the eternal blizzard. Only with the aid of Helping Spirits will Nuna and Fox have any chance of survival in a land where survival is impossible.

Unlock fascinating video insights - Elders, storytellers, and other members of the Alaska Native community share stories and wisdom about their culture, values and the amazing Arctic world encountered by players in over 30 minutes of interviews.

Never Alone leverages the power of videogames to share, celebrate and extend culture. These World Games will empower indigenous communities around the world to share their stories in an authentic, engaging, and entertaining way.

Upper One Games was originally established in 2012 by CITC Enterprises, Inc. (CEI), a for-profit subsidiary of Cook Inlet Tribal Council and was the first indigenous- owned commercial game company in the United States.

Upper One Games partnered with E-Line Media for co-development and co-publishing of Never Alone; the partnership was created to ensure that the game was developed inclusively with the development team and Alaska Native people working hand-in-hand to deliver a great, meaningful experience.

In 2014, E-Line Media and Upper One Games merged to streamline operations and unify the strengths of the management teams. The combined management team plans to expand the "World Games" initiative under the Upper One Games brand.

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Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is the first game developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native people. Nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers and community members contributed to the development of the game. Play as a young Iñupiat girl and an arctic fox as they set out to find the source of the eternal [...]

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Gender Studies Conference. Feminist Matterings: Indigenous and Arctic engagements

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Gender Studies Conference. Feminist Matterings: Indigenous and Arctic engagements

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Gender Studies Conference 2022:

Indigenous and Arctic engagements

30 November-2 December, 2022. University of Oulu, Finland

WELCOME TO THE 2022 GENDER STUDIES CONFERENCE

Our lives are increasingly being reshaped by multiple changes, such as increased mobilities of people and goods, digitalisation, and rapid changes in the labour market. New challenges include, for example, the cutting of public sector resources, the increased market conformity of societal systems, social polarisation, violence, climate change, biodiversity loss, and increased global and local inequalities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These challenges require thinking differently in open, inclusive, and responsible ways. As an interdisciplinary field of research, Gender Studies and feminist research play an important role in producing knowledge about multifaceted social problems and inequalities.
The conference seeks to produce new feminist and Indigenous thought to reimagine future solidarities and ways of knowing. The conference calls to explore how rich transdisciplinary collaboration can help feminist research
matter in the effort to build more sustainable, intelligent and humane world(s) in the Arctic and beyond. In addition to alluding to the ethico-political significance of feminist research, the keyword matterings in the conference title also refers to new materialist inspirations and the material aspects of knowledge production. In the spirit of Science and Technology Studies (STS), we wish to investigate the material aspects of epistemic practices and the complex relationship between knowledge and power.

The conference also welcomes scholars who are interested in developing different ways of decolonizing feminist knowledge, including, indigenous STS studies, antiracist knowledge production, arts activism(s), ethics of knowledge, and queering knowledge and research methodologies. The location of the conference at the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, also provides a unique opportunity to approach these themes from the perspective of Arctic research.

The keynote speakers at the conference are:

Professor Suvi Keskinen, The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki.

Professor Dorte Marie Søndergaard, Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Denmark.

Professor Kim TallBear, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

The Gender Studies 2022 conference is organized and hosted by the Gender Studies at the University of Oulu. It is organized in collaboration with the Association for Gender Studies in Finland (SUNS) and the Giellagas Institute, which focuses on research on the Sámi language and culture at the University of Oulu.

The conference will combine face-to-face and online presentations. Please follow our social media to find out about the latest information: Twitter (@GenderOulu), Facebook and Instagram (@GenderStudiesOulu).

For more information please contact: genderstudiesconference2022@oulu.fi.

Call for papers: 1 May 2022 – 24 June 2022 (EXTENDED!)

5 August: Workshop organizers inform about the accepted presenters

1 Sep 2022: The registration opens

30 Nov–2 Dec 2022: Join us in Oulu

Organizing committee 2022

Chairs

Johanna Hiitola, PhD, Associate Professor (Docent), University Lecturer

Helena Louhela, PhD, Postdoctoral researcher

Other members

Tuija Huuki, PhD, Associate Professor (Docent)

Marko Jouste, PhD, University lecturer

Iida Kauhanen, Doctoral researcher

Ilmari Leppihalme, PhD, Postdoctoral researcher

Suvi Pihkala, PhD, Postdoctoral researcher

Maria Petäjäniemi, Doctoral researcher

Eveliina Puutio, Doctoral researcher

Helena Ristaniemi, Doctoral researcher

Sonja Tanhua, Doctoral researcher

Marian Tumanyan, Doctoral researcher

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Gender Studies Conference 2022. Feminist matterings: Indigenous and Arctic engagements

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WELCOME TO THE 2022 GENDER STUDIES CONFERENCE
Our lives are increasingly being reshaped by multiple changes, such as increased mobilities of people and goods, digitalisation, and rapid changes in the labour market. New challenges include, for example, the cutting of public sector resources, the

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Nunavut's health minister has announced a new scholarship created in the memory of Savanna Pikuyak, an Inuk woman from Sanirajak, Nunavut, who was killed shortly after moving to Ottawa for school.

John Main, the territory's health minister, said in a Wednesday news release that neither the Department of Health nor he, wanted Savanna's death "to be in vain."

"I was saddened to hear of the untimely and senseless murder of Savanna Pikuyak," he said in a statement. "Savanna's death is a great loss to her family, her friends, community and indeed to all of Nunavut."

Pikuyak, 22, had moved to Ottawa to begin studies toward becoming a nurse. She moved into a room in a shared rental she had found on Facebook near Algonquin College in early September, where she had just started studying in the pre-health sciences pathways program.

Within a week of moving, police responded to a 911 call reporting a woman had been seriously stabbed. A 33-year-old man named Nikolas Ibey was charged with second-degree murder. He allegedly turned himself in to officers when they arrived on the scene.

Pikuyak had worked for Nunavut's Department of Health as a summer student in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Main said "Savanna was a role model and a kind and goodhearted individual. She cared deeply for her family and the well-being of others. She was a person who wanted to better herself to help better Nunavut."

"We want her memory to serve as an inspiration and motivation to more young Nunavummiut who want to pursue a nursing career."

The $5,000 scholarship in Savanna's name will be awarded annually to one Nunavut Inuk student entering pre-nursing studies each year.

"I want to extend my deepest sympathies to Savanna's family and community. I hope this small gesture in her name will help in their healing journey," Main said.

Following the news of her death, Algonquin College told CBC News in a statement that it is offering resources and counselling services to students and staff.

In a previous interview Pikuyak's mother, Sheba Pikuyak, remembered her daughter as "smart and bright."

She recalled how the young woman had taught herself knitting, crocheting, beading and other crafts as a teenager. She was also an avid cook. Sheba said her family was trying their best to cope with the devastating news.

"She was truly exceptional," she said of her daughter. "She had a heart of gold."

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Nunavut announces new nursing scholarship in memory of Savanna Pikuyak | CBC News

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Nunavut's health minister has announced a new scholarship created in the memory of Savanna Pikuyak, an Inuk woman from Sanirajak, Nunavut, who was killed shortly after moving to Ottawa for school. John Main, the territory's health minister, said in a Wednesday news release that neither the Department of Health nor he, wanted Savanna's death "to be in vain."

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The rising sun paints the feet
of night-crawling enemies.
And they scatter into the burning hills.
I have fought each of them.
I know them by name.
From before I could speak.
I’ve used every weapon.
To make them retreat.
Yet they return every night
If I don’t keep guard
They elbow through openings in faith
Tear the premise of trust
And stick their shields through the doubt of smoke
To challenge me.
I grow tired of the heartache
Of every small and large war
Passed from generation
To generation.
But it is not in me to give up.
I was taught to give honor to the house of the warriors
Which cannot exist without the house of the peacemakers.

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Theory as a Liberatory Practice by bell hooks

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Theory as a Liberatory Practice by bell hooks

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Theory as a Liberatory Practice by bell hooks

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In Praise of Creoleness by Jean Bernabé et al.

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In Praise of Creoleness by Jean Bernabé et al.

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“Sonnet MCLXXXI: for the murdered and missing Indigenous women on Turtle Island” by Tanaya Winder

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“Sonnet MCLXXXI: for the murdered and missing Indigenous women on Turtle Island” by Tanaya Winder

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“Not when or where but how, did we lose you,
in between Last Seen _____ the words become elegy
echoing sidewalks and streets. Hand out your picture to
strangers. Post it on Post Office bulletin boards: Missing
as if it were destination, a place one goes
to disappear in invisible cities. Except there’s no hero like
in the movies. No ads, mainstream coverage, or TV shows
to show our story. Are we invisible if no one knows, why?
When 1,181 women were taken, did eyes cease to have vision
or pay attention to a body being swallowed up?
Those left behind who remember you continue on a mission,
an endless search of the cities in which we loved
(and love) you. We will never forget. We demand for you
action, words, even a poem that ends: your lives matter, too.”

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Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective by Donna Haraway

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Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective by Donna Haraway

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Journal Information

Feminist Studies, first published in 1972, is the oldest continuing scholarly journal in the field of women's studies published in the U.S. Contents of the journal reflect its commitment to publishing an interdisciplinary body of feminist knowledge, in multiple genres (research, criticism, commentaries, creative work), that views the intersection of gender with racial identity, sexual orientation, economic means, geographical location, and physical ability as the touchstone for its intellectual analysis. Whether drawn from the complex past or the shifting present, the work that appears in Feminist Studies addresses social and political issues that intimately and significantly affect women and men in the United States and around the world.

Publisher Information

Founded in 1972, Feminist Studies was the first scholarly journal in women's studies and remains a flagship publication with a record of breaking new ground in the field. Whether drawing from the complex past or the shifting present, the pieces that appear in Feminist Studies raise social and political questions that intimately and significantly affect women and men around the world.

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Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective on JSTOR

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Journal Information Feminist Studies, first published in 1972, is the oldest continuing scholarly journal in the field of women's studies published in the U.S. Contents of the journal reflect its commitment to publishing an interdisciplinary body of feminist knowledge, in multiple genres (research, criticism, commentaries, creative work), that views the intersection of gender with racial identity, sexual orientation, economic means, geographical location, and physical ability as the touchstone for its intellectual analysis.

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As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

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As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

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On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship by Audra Simpson

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On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship by Audra Simpson

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On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, 'Voice' and Colonial Citizenship

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Authors should note that in the spirit of open access to research Junctures is published under a New Zealand cc-by-nc-nd licence. This licence is the most stringent cc-by licence currently available that means that people are free to read and redistribute the article but only with full acknowledgement of the author and the source.

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Essay - Their Names Cover 90 Pages by Tony Rehagen | Poetry Foundation

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Their Names Cover 90 Pages by Tony Rehagen

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Their Names Cover 90 Pages by Tony Rehagen

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In late December of 2012, around the time of the winter solstice, Anna Marie Sewell went out for a walk. Night had fallen early in the Alberta Avenue neighborhood, a crumbling corner of Edmonton, Alberta, made up largely of Native Americans. A bitter wind whipped down the streets and alleyways. A giant hole still marked the pavement where a water main had burst days before. Sewell recognized another pedestrian walking in the night, an older woman wrapped in a blanket and hunched against the cold. "Because I knew her, I knew that she was hunched up against other things, too," says Sewell, a former Edmonton poet laureate who is half Ojibway Listuguj Mi'gmap First Nation Quebec. "She was white, but she was living through these things that happen to [indigenous people]. I felt powerless to say anything to her. I felt to myself that this little moment, actually wailing in the cold and in the dark, meant something."

Sewell went home and began composing a poem. "I started writing to unpeel what it meant to be her, but also what it meant to be myself," she says. "And as I wrote, it began to unfold that it was relevant to a larger issue."

That larger issue is the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women throughout North America, particularly in Sewell's home country. The most recent data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) indicates that in the past 30 years, 1,017 aboriginal women have been murdered in Canada, with 174 more reported missing. Indigenous women comprise roughly 25 percent of Canada's female homicide victims and 11 percent of female missing persons cases, despite representing only 4.3 percent of the country's total female population. Those numbers are more than three years old, though, and potentially underrepresentative. The Native Women's Association of Canada has done its own research and believes that closer to 4,000 women have disappeared or been killed. One stretch of Highway 16, a narrow road that cuts east to west across British Columbia en route to the Pacific Ocean, is dubbed the "Highway of Tears" because an estimated 18 to 50 women, most of them native and teenagers, have vanished or been killed there since 1969. Strewn along the remote mountain and deep woodland pass are faded photos of missing women and billboards warning native girls not to hitchhike.

Most of the cases have gone unsolved. The enormity of the loss-so many absent mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers-is shared by surviving aboriginals of all tribes across Canada. Even for indigenous women who haven't lost a loved one, the crisis's underlying racism and sexism is all too familiar. "I wanted to make people commit and say, 'This is us,'" says Sewell. "'This is us in a mining town or a prairie city or in the heart of the jungle, this is us too. None of us gets home until we all get home.'"

The unifying "we" is the key refrain in Sewell's poem " Washing the World," inspired by her blanket-bundled neighbor and dedicated to the missing and murdered:

Sewell is one of dozens of indigenous poets and artists writing about this devastating tragedy. Her work seeks to give voice to the countless thousands who now have none. "You can say, 'Here is this issue, the sociological and legal aspect,'" she says, "but always to the person experiencing it, it's personal. I realized why people pray. I really saw in that moment that one of the necessary uses of prayer is to call on the thing that you know will get you through."

***

Each name in Marcie Rendon's poem "Trigger Warning Or Genocide is Worse Than Racism " falls like a lone drop into an overflowing reservoir of grief:

Tina Michelle Fontaine, 15,

Sagkeeng First Nation Manitoba. went missing July 2014

her body found wrapped in a bag in Winnipeg's Red River Aug. 17, 2014.

no arrests have been announced

Angela Poorman 29-year-old mother of three

found laying on the sidewalk in critical condition

Winnipeg's North End Dec. 14, 2014.

stabbed to death, No charges have been laid

Brandy Wesaquate, 28, was last seen leaving a house party in Regina on New Year's Day

she was born a man and identifies as a woman.

Rendon is a former recipient of the Loft's Inroads Writers of Color Award for Native Americans and a member of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation of northern Minnesota. She frequently travels to Canada to visit friends, from whom she first learned of the Highway of Tears a few years ago. But she has long witnessed the pain that haunts indigenous communities. In the late 1980s, a serial killer raped and murdered three Native American women in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, just south of downtown. Victims' bodies were found on the railroad tracks two blocks from where Rendon lived with her young children. To this day, according to data from the nonprofit Human Trafficking Center, around 25 percent of the women arrested for prostitution in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, identify as Native American despite natives constituting only 2.2 percent of the county's total population.

"There's this misconception that because we don't exist in the world's mind view that we don't exist," says Rendon. "Currently, it's our women who are trafficked and our women who are making up the prison population. This is just an issue that's always been there."

"Trigger Warning" continues:

It's something of a found poem. Three years ago, Rendon was scheduled to read at a spoken word show at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Originally, she wanted to draw attention to the crisis by reading all the names from the recently released RCMP inquiry into the murders and disappearances, but she realized that all of them wouldn't fit into her three-minute slot. Her solution was to abridge the list of statistics while retaining its flat, repetitive cadence. Each name she included represents dozens of others not named in the poem. And each is a sharp indictment of government inaction. "Trigger Warning," which lists only seven names, interspersed with Rendon's admonishments, concludes matter-of-factly: "Their names, single spaced, cover 90 typewritten pages."

"With poetry, you can shape it another way, make it easier to process," Rendon says. "And with poetry as spoken word, you have an audience. Instead of 90 pages, I can say it in three minutes, still providing hard-hitting context for the larger issue."

Poet and activist Gregory Scofield, a member of the Manitoba Métis now living in Ontario, sounds a similar drumbeat with his "Name A Day" Twitter project. On a regular basis, sometimes every day, he tweets the name, age, and, occasionally, the last known location of a missing woman, along with the caption "find our missing sister" and the hashtag #MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women). "You never know who knows these women and where that information travels," he says. "And for the ones who have been killed, it serves as a way to honor these women."

It also raises awareness across cultures. "There are still a lot of people across North America who know nothing about this issue," says Scofield, who adds that it's incumbent on Native Americans to educate others about these cases. "The issue is tender. It's important that people are respectful of those stories and the families whose loved ones are lost or missing. I see that as a very sacred issue. As indigenous artists, we're using our voices to talk about those issues. At this time, it's important for artists outside the community to take a step back and listen and learn and witness what is going on."

***

Of course, white indifference isn't new. Even many outsiders who are aware of, and sympathetic to, the unpunished crimes against indigenous women don't understand how deep these wounds go. It's not just a contemporary issue either. "It's been going on since the time of first contact [with whites]," says Scofield. "Indigenous women have always been seen as disposable, as property. Physical, emotional, and spiritual violence has always been thrust upon them. That dates back hundreds and hundreds of years." Scofield notes the disproportionate number of cases, both solved and unsolved, of native women disappearing from the 1950s, 40s, 30s, 20s, and on back. David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon, published in 2017, recounts the organized shootings and poisonings of wealthy Osage landowners over oil in Oklahoma during the 1920s, horrific crimes that were never satisfactorily solved. "That really speaks to the systemic racism and sexism that indigenous women have faced since the time of contact," Scofield says.

Today, those colonial attitudes manifest in the hardships within native communities and government reservations. In the United States, one in four Native Americans lives in poverty. Public services on reservations, including health care, are drastically underfunded. In 2013, Indian Health Services (IHS) spent an average of $2,849 per patient, compared to $7,717 per patient nationally. According to a 2015 report from Statistics Canada, a government data agency, the risk of avoidable death for First Nations adults in that country is five times that of non-indigenous Canadians. First Nations adults are also more than twice as likely to die from "avoidable causes" such as alcohol and drugs. Rates of fetal alcohol syndrome among native infants are significantly higher than that of babies in the non-indigenous population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that Native American male youth are twice as likely to die from suicide. And, per the US Justice Department, one in three native women has been raped, and three out of five will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. A majority of these crimes are committed by non-natives who, until recently, were largely exempt from prosecution in tribal courts.

Scofield and Sewell also see a connection between missing and endangered women and the hot-button topic in native-colonial relations: resource extraction. Many of the towns where crimes against women occur, including Prince George in British Columbia, along the Highway of Tears, are resource towns built around oil drilling and mining sites. As Sewell explains, "Mining companies come and bring in workers just for the money and the job, but not with the idea that this is their home." That nomadic state of mind leads to indifference toward the land and those who inhabit it. "There's the insidious idea that it's man's right to take from the Earth and from the women," Sewell says.

The Albertan Cree/Métis poet Marilyn Dumont captures outsiders' mistreatment of native women in her poem " Helen Betty Osborne." Osborne was a 19-year-old Cree from Manitoba who was sexually assaulted and murdered by white men in 1971. Dumont's poem, from her collection A Really Good Brown Girl (1996), is sort of an open letter to Osborne. The first stanza starts, "Betty, if I set out to write this poem about you," and the penultimate stanza concludes:

it might be about the 'townsfolk' (gentle word)

townsfolk who 'believed native girls were easy'

and 'less likely to complain if a sexual proposition led to violence.'

A 2014 study found that violent crime in so-called oil boom counties in North Dakota and Montana rose an average of 18.5 percent between 2006 and 2012 when companies moved in crews to tap oil and natural gas reserves. Meanwhile, violence in counties without drilling or mining dropped 25.6 percent.

"It correlates horribly across Canada and the United States, as well," says Sewell. "Rape the women; rape the land."

***

Besides being a common denominator in these killings and disappearances, racism also inhibits the prevention and investigation of the crimes. A 2015 United Nations report found that Canadian aboriginal women between the ages of 25 and 44 are five times more likely to experience violence and die as a result, and that in 39 percent of the cases, the perpetrator (when found at all) is a non-aboriginal. The report also denounced the Canadian government's response as "inadequate," and further stated: "It was very evident to the Committee that the lasting consequences of the sexual and racial discrimination against the aboriginal community during the colonial and post-colonial periods has been a significant contributory factor to the disproportionately high levels of violence by both State and non-State actors on aboriginal women, and the way in which such violence has been, for the most part, treated with impunity."

The report details "critical" failures of law enforcement: failures in report-taking, failures to consider all investigative strategies, and failures of internal review and public accountability. In some cases, the UN committee found that officers assumed that missing aboriginal women were runaways or that the disappearances were the victims' own faults because of their "so-called high-risk lifestyles."

In 2017, the Canadian government responded to the UN critique by commissioning a new $53.8 million, two-year study into the issue, but even that was plagued with delays, communications snafus, and procedural impediments. Frustrated families of survivors have demanded a complete reboot of the entire process, prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to more or less apologize for the study's failures and that of the government as a whole. He agrees that Canada has, for decades, dealt "inadequately" with the issue of missing and murdered aboriginals.

"There's a lot of racism around when indigenous people go missing," says Tanaya Winder, a Colorado poet of Southern Ute, Duckwater Shoshone, and Paiute heritage. She mimics investigators' boilerplate response: "'All of the women are putting themselves in these situations.' 'She's probably an alcoholic or ran off with this man.'"

That's why when Winder first researched this subject in 2015, she was struck by the case of Loretta Saunders, an Inuk from Labrador in Nova Scotia. Saunders was found murdered along the Trans-Canada Highway in 2014. She had struggled with alcohol, drugs, and homelessness, but had pulled her life together and returned to school. She was 26 years old, a student who happened to be writing her honors thesis on missing and murdered indigenous women.

"The police couldn't just say it was only uneducated women," Winder says. Saunders's murderers, a pair of non-native tenants who owed her rent on a Halifax apartment, choked, beat, and suffocated her when she came to collect. In a rare show of justice, the murderers were caught and sentenced to life in prison.

In response, Winder wrote "A Lament for Laura and the Disappeared," a poem of defiance built around the hard data of the tragedy:

I am not murdered. I am not missing

And so I will speak even to those who won't listen.

I am not murdered. I am not missing

I am one part of a thread of voices

Of bodies or women standing up to speak for those who are murdered

Those whose families are missing them

We are here to support our stolen sisters

Young native girls and aboriginal women

Aboriginal Canadian women are 5 times more likely to be violently attacked than non-aboriginal women

Like many poets, Winder has done more than just write about these cases. In 2015, she helped organize the Sing Our Rivers Red exhibition in the Fargo/Moorhead area of North Dakota and Minnesota. The event featured food, spoken word and musical performances, and murals from Native American artists. The centerpiece was an exhibit of 1,181 single earrings, one for each indigenous woman "stolen." The piece was so popular that it still tours events all around the United States and Canada. "Anytime someone is raising an issue, there are facts, but they are hard to wrap your head around," Winder says. "This is a visual representation. Each earring is different. Each one is beautiful and brings joy-but it's missing its other half. With the amount of time it takes to set up each earring, you feel the weight of that number."

***

All of the research and cold statistics, all of the names on that staggering list, can't convey the despair that runs beneath these boomtowns, prairie villages, badland reservations, and the Highway of Tears. Sometimes the only way violence becomes real to people is when it happens to them. That was the case with Scofield, who lost his aunt in 1998 when she died under mysterious circumstances. Her death was ruled a homicide but was never fully investigated. Scofield won't talk about the details. He wrote a poem that he hopes will help those on the outside better understand his unfathomable sadness. The poem, "She is Spitting a Mouthful of Stars (nikâwi's song)," begins:

"I've always said as a poet, if we're lucky, we're gifted with one or two poems during our career. This was a gift," he says. "I wrote it in 15 to 20 minutes. It's about speaking and honoring the women who have been taken through violence, through racism, through sexism. It's very much a ceremony of their resilience and their resistance, traveling from this realm, making their travel beyond the Milky Way and finding a place of peace and a place of rest."

Scofield has done his share of activism, of showing up to speak and read at rallies. His greatest contribution, though, is poetry that expresses the profound grief that he and thousands of others share. "It's been incredible to see how that poem is traveling," he says. Indeed, the piece has been widely shared on social media, has been put to music, and was even featured on an art gallery-sponsored billboard in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "The message of the poem and the spirit of the poem is traveling. I believe in the ceremony of what we are creating and the ceremony of creation."

Scofield has witnessed incredible change in the past two decades. When he first started writing about missing and murdered indigenous women, he says few people beyond the victims' families thought about the crisis. Now, partially through the works of these poets and many others like them, the issue is finally drawing attention. "There's still a lot of work to be done," Scofield says. "We need to look in the mirror and confront the impact of colonization and address the effects that have come to affect us all. We're at a point right now where we're trying to find ways to heal."

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Their Names Cover 90 Pages by Tony Rehagen | Poetry Foundation

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In late December of 2012, around the time of the winter solstice, Anna Marie Sewell went out for a walk. Night had fallen early in the Alberta Avenue neighborhood, a crumbling corner of Edmonton, Alberta, made up largely of Native Americans. A bitter wind whipped down the streets and alleyways.

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