Native women activism and motivation: Missing and murdered indigenous women

Abstract

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is a grassroots movement spearheaded by Indigenous women across Turtle Island (North America). Native women continue to put themselves in harm’s way to protect our future generation, regardless of emotional, physical, and/or mental burnout. There is a chance our Native women and girls will never feel safe. The question arises, what motivates them to continue doing this work knowing that they may never see change during their lifetime? With this research I sought to share space and embrace Native women's stories to highlight the motivation behind their continued strength as MMIW leaders/activists. Native traditionalism can be described as holding land and places as having the highest possible meaning with all our statements made with the land in mind. Storytelling is a form of ceremonial Native practice. Narrative Inquiry as a methodology utilizes stories and stored experiences of a small group of people as data. Data is developed using interviewing and reflexive journaling. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis, a qualitative method used to identify, report, and analyze data for the means produced and emerge organically by people, situations, and events (Riessman, 2008). This study had a total of six participants with five completing two one-hour-long Zoom interviews and one completing a one-hour-long Zoom interview. Of the six participants, four opted to have their personal name and organization name included in the study. The interpretation of the results was through the lens of an Anishinaabe Ikwe, Ojibwe woman. Although the Native women participants from this study do not all share their identity with the Ojibwe, as a Native researcher the themes organically surfaced through the collection of their stories. The results of this study highlight the overall spiritual and community-driven resiliency these Native women hold. One main theme, Mindimooyenh, and four subthemes emerged from the study, Aakwa’ode’ewin, Nbwaakaawin, Mnaadendimowin, and Zaagidwin.