President Biden issued a proclamation yesterday.
PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION
On Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, we remember the many lives shattered or lost, and commit to working with Native communities to find justice, keep families safe, and help them heal.
Indian Country has been gripped by an epidemic of missing or murdered Indigenous people, whose cases far too often go unsolved. Families have been left investigating disappearances on their own, demanding justice for their loved ones, and grieving pieces of their souls. Generations of activists and organizers have pushed for accountability, safety, and change. We need to respond with urgency and the resources needed to stop the violence and reverse the legacy of inequity and neglect that often drives it.
- snip -
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2023, as Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. I call on all Americans and ask all levels of government to support Tribal governments and Tribal communities’ efforts to increase awareness and address the issues of missing or murdered Indigenous persons through appropriate programs and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.
—JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
This is from VA News.
May 5 is recognized as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) throughout the nation. In partnership with the Departments of Justice and Interior, VA is part of a joint task force focused on raising awareness of MMIWG and reducing violent crime against American Indians and Alaska Natives.
It’s estimated that four out of five Native women experience some form of violence in their lifetime. Native women also face murder rates more than 10 times the national average. Despite efforts to raise awareness, of the 5,712 cases of MMIWG in the United States, only 116 were included in the Department of Justice database.
And, this is from a fellow Kossak from comments in my diary "Native Americans Experience Significant Racism" (by Educators), That Racism Kills Native Women.
I was playing with my great granddaughter this morning. She is enrolled in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana. She will soon be six.
At sixteen her mother was kidnapped outside Polson by four men who made clear their intent to gang rape her. Only pure coincidence saved her. Just as they were trying to push her into their van the van’s engine seized and caught fire. Smoke started billowing into the air. The men fled on foot as passing drivers pulled over to put out the fire, one of them a Tribal Police Officer.
None of the men, all of who were apprehended very quickly, was ever charged for what they tried to do to my granddaughter in-law. The US Attorney General for the District of Montana didn’t prioritize the case. These men faced a long list of drug charges, gun charges, and human trafficking charges from other incidents in their wasted lives. The first of them will be eligible for parole ten years from now.
But Dove was nearly snatched on a busy road in plain sight. It haunts her, her family, and my family to this day. And nobody in power gave a shit.
They said, “nobody in power gave a shit.” Well, at least here at the Orange Satan it made it into at least one line and a couple words — yesterday.
Surely not, I must have searched wrong.
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So, pardon me.
America, this is Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.
PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION
On Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, we remember the many lives shattered or lost, and commit to working with Native communities to find justice, keep families safe, and help them heal.
Indian Country has been gripped by an epidemic of missing or murdered Indigenous people, whose cases far too often go unsolved. Families have been left investigating disappearances on their own, demanding justice for their loved ones, and grieving pieces of their souls. Generations of activists and organizers have pushed for accountability, safety, and change. We need to respond with urgency and the resources needed to stop the violence and reverse the legacy of inequity and neglect that often drives it.
- snip -
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2023, as Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. I call on all Americans and ask all levels of government to support Tribal governments and Tribal communities’ efforts to increase awareness and address the issues of missing or murdered Indigenous persons through appropriate programs and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.
—JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
Author is a member of the Metis Nation of the United States