National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) Awareness Day: Unveiling the Collective Story of Indigenous Voices and the Imperative for Awareness with Charlene Apok

In honor of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Awareness Month and MMIIP Awareness Day (MMIP), Rising Indigenous Voices Radio interviewed Charlene Apok (Iñupiaq), the Director of Gender Justice and Healing at Native Movement. She unveiled the layers of significance embedded within MMIGS Day, shedding light on why this annual observance is crucial for igniting awareness and catalyzing action.

Can you share with us the significance of National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) and why it’s essential for raising awareness?

Raising awareness is such an important part and a foundational part that translates awareness into action, right? So, without people knowing you have no people doing anything and so without that recognition, people also don’t, aren’t being held responsible for any pieces of this work and any of the causes and so awareness raising is really important. It often starts with the communities and the people who are most impacted by this. And again, it becomes our collective story. That’s another part of raising awareness is that so many people on this issue of missing and murdered indigenous peoples for a long time, we just thought it was just happening to us or it was only in our family, and as people share their story, it becomes our collective story and we raise awareness and say, hey, this is really happening to us. This is what’s going on, this is our truth and this is the change that needs to happen. But without that recognition and without raising awareness, there’s no accountability and responsibility, so it’s an important part for, you know, people switching from not knowing, to having awareness, to wanting to take actions.

As the Director of Gender Justice and Healing at Native Movement, how does your organization contribute to addressing the issues faced by MMIWG2S individuals and communities?

Native Movement does incredible work in supporting grassroots organizing across the state. And this issue of MMIWG two s really falls within the area of work of gender justice, right? We see disproportionate rates of feminine, identifying people being impacted by violence experiencing violence over time and so we support grassroots organizing families and people coming together and organizing to address this issue and the other part that is important is the intersectionality of this, right? So the things that happen to the land happen to our bodies, the things that happen to the water happened to our bodies and we know that we have to protect the sacred right? Defend all things sacred, including our lands, our waters and our bodies. We know that the same values of extraction, the practices of non-consent.Those are the things that permeate into lands, being stolen and bodies being harmed and so we work to undo that work and we see the intersectionality of protecting our lands our waters and our bodies and specifically at Native Movement. Again, there’s grassroots organizing across the state. We train up people to learn how to organize and how to take action on the issues that they’re facing in their communities.

What are some of the challenges faced by Indigenous communities in addressing the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit individuals?

The first thing that comes to mind is just the heavy grief, right? As communities as indigenous peoples, we have faced and gone through intergenerational, many forms of grief and loss through the impacts and from the impacts of colonization, both historically and ongoing and those that are most impacted are often people of color and feminine identifying people, so that would be indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. So the heaviness of grief and processing grief I think is one of the most challenging parts, but I think the most important part of this work is also intergenerational healing. We’re learning to come together, we’re learning and passing on our ways of healing. We’re reclaiming ways that are that things that were stolen from our peoples. And we’re using that to heal and come together and we’re becoming stronger together and we’re recreating our systems of care. That’s another piece of this work. There were so many ways that are families and communities were woven together in a way where it kept us safe. And through the impacts of colonization, those things were stolen or they were banned or they were criminalized, right? And we’re starting to reclaim those things, our language, our crafts, our arts, our so many things being on the land, our plant knowledge, and those are the things that keep us well and bring us back together.

So there are many many hard challenges being faced by indigenous communities and the issue of addressing MMIWTS, but also I think the biggest thing is that we should also acknowledge and talk about the ways that we are intergenerationally healing together collectively through this work. And I think that that’s a important piece that we should be sharing more and saying what we’re doing. What is our strategies for healing, not just for addressing injustice, right? But what are the ways that we are caring for one another and becoming stronger through this work? Right.

In what ways does the intersectionality of gender, race, and culture impact the experiences of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit individuals in the context of violence and injustice?

We know that intersectionality is really important to talk about in many framings of injustices because we are not singular mono people, no one is right. We are multifaceted. We have intersectional identities. And when it comes to violence, we know that people of color and feminine-identifying people, women, girls and two spirit, people are the ones who face the highest impact because we’re targeted, right? Those are the identities in a dominant society in Western society that are targeted and whose power have been taken. And so when we talk about intersectionality of gender, race and culture and violence, we know that we need to acknowledge that these things come together in our lived experiences, we embody these differences. And then we also see unfortunately that these identities are the ones that face higher injustices. And that the root causes of these issues are because Western society colonization targeted these powerful identities being feminine and being too spirit.

And you know, those were not areas or identities that were less than anyone else in our indigenous communities. And that became a threat to outside, into white supremacy and outsiders, right? And so those are the groups that we know were then targeted and broken apart in efforts of colonization. But as we all know, we are still here, we are still here. And so indigenous women, girls and two spirit individuals and in our communities, those are the ones who are often still carrying this work. We still exist. And these are the people who also should be on the front lines of doing this work and leading to solutions because we are the most impacted. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need allies, right? We need everybody. It doesn’t mean that they should brunt the burden of the work. But that, that is the leadership that should be supported when addressing this work. And I think intersectionality and talking about that is so important so that we can see the many lenses and the many ways that we are impacted by this. I think the other part besides intersectionality of identity is also that this issue is not singular, right? The violences that we face are not just gender-based violences, they are related to climate justice, and environmental justice, right? Overmilitarization in our communities. So we can also use the word intersectionality to not just understand issues that impact different identities and that intersectionality of who we are as human beings. But also on a societal level of seeing these as intersectional issues that are being disproportionately faced also by indigenous communities and often feminine identifying people.

What actions can individuals and communities take to support MMIWG2S awareness and justice?

There are so many, you know, a lot of people often ask, well, I’m not in a working group or I don’t work at an org that does this and there is still room for everybody to be a part of the solution. When we talk about systemic issues, that means that we need systemic solutions and that means we need everyone in every sector doing their part, right? So one of the things I let people know is what are your skills and talents is, you know, what are your skills and talents? Can you donate those skills and talents to an event? You know, can you raise funds and donate them using your arts and crafts, you know, or maybe, you know, you have legal background, how can you help with the analysis of this and give that to the movement as well. And so there’s lots of different ways that people can come together. We also really encourage people. We try to share out the work that we do so that communities can do it too. You know, maybe they’re at the place where they wanna do an awareness walk or maybe they want to do a city resolution or some kind of recognition initiative. You know, we’re more than happy to share what that look like in other communities so that they can pick up where their community is at and support them where they’re at and even doing things like crafting circles where people can come together and just have a good healthy healing event. So there’s so many ideas and really the the thing is is that we need everyone to be a part of the solution. We need to support local efforts and tribal initiatives, whether that’s things happening in your specific tribe or in your region and voting, right? We need people, we need to be voting people into elected positions, who will take a strong stance on this, who will stand up against violence, who are going to make sure that there’s protections in place, right? So there’s many things that can be done from voting to community organizing to donations. So yeah, there’s lots of ways that people can be involved and take action on this issue.

Looking ahead, what are some of the key initiatives or actions needed to create meaningful change and address the systemic issues contributing to the disproportionately high rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people?

There has been so much initiative being taken from Turtle Island from Canada to the Lower 48 to here in Alaska, and we’re really starting to connect that issue and raise awareness and take action. And yes, there is so much more that needs to be done Here in Alaska, one of the big is, is having noncompetitive annual, renewed funding for our tribal justice systems, right? Those are not, that’s not guaranteed and secured year to year. So that’s a big one, you know, to also just increase knowledge and awareness of gender-expansive people. What does gender-based violence mean? Why does it disproportionately impact women, girls, two-spirit people, gender expansive people and making sure that that’s known, you know, so we need and how do we protect that group of people as well, right? So there’s some narrative pieces and better understanding at a societal level of gender justice and then of course, like a huge one. We need more direct services for survivor families. Plain and simple. There’s some amazing work being done out there. There’s lots of,, service providers that are being overworked that they simply cannot meet the high amount of cases that continue to happen. This is not just a historical issue, it’s ongoing and our systems are being over flooded. Right. So we need more direct services and more funding, to ensure that we’re supporting survivor families as well. Of course, I can’t not mention data. You know, there’s lots of room for data sovereignty and supporting tribal da data sovereignty with where they’re at so that we have the information needed to self determine change, right? That’s gonna look different community to community, tribe, to tribe. but plain and simple, we’re always going to need the inform, accurate information to inform and self determine the change that we want to see. And then of course, you know, we can’t do this work, we can’t keep demanding action and lead with fire all the time, right? We need to do it in a healing-centered way. We need to pause and take care of one another. We need to keep gathering in good spaces and doing healing activities, meet each other with compassion, humility, work together and really just start recreating collective healing spaces where we’re recreating systems of care. Those are some of the reasons we have. This is we’ve become so many things are independent or siloed or torn apart. Right. And we’re coming back together and creating those ceremonies, caring for one another. And I think that that is we can’t do any of this work unless we continue to be on our healing path and uplift one another. And just care for one another in a good way as we do this. And so there’s many strategic things, there’s policy things, there’s research things. But none of that is going to be sustainable unless we pause and care for each other and that we reinstate healing justice and that we’re creating systems of care in our communities, so lots to be done. But I think we’re on the right pathway.