GTB holds 4th annual Missing & Murdered Indigenous People Day
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB) held its 4th annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) Day of Awareness Monday afternoon.
Community members and GTB staff gathered outside the Heritage Library in Peshawbestown and heard from various speakers, including tribal chairwoman Sandra Witherspoon, who held a moment of silence to honor the memory of missing and murdered family members and friends.
“Today we are here to support the family and friends of those who have lost loved ones. The loss of a family member is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when a loved one is taken by an act of violence or when their body is not recovered…” Witherspoon said at the event. “As Indigenous people, we are a small part of the world’s population, but we have one of the largest numbers of missing and murdered loved ones. The missing and murdered Indigenous people movement has shined a national spotlight on this injustice, and it’s making a huge difference in the way these cases are being handled.” In addition to the drumming and dancing for the MMIP program, there was a water ceremony held and a sacred fire was started with GTB member Aaron TwoCrow handling firekeeper duties. Attendees also gathered for prayer, made signs and hung red garments in remembrance of those lost to the MMIP crisis.
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, for decades, cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people, particularly women and girls, have been under-reported, under-investigated, and unsolved throughout the United States.
Statistics show that Native American and Alaska Native women make up a significant portion of these missing and murdered individuals. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) reported in a 2016 study that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women, or 84.3%, have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56.1% who have experienced sexual violence. Additionally, in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native females experienced the second highest rate of homicide in 2020. Overall, more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.
GTB Tribal Police Detective Troy Lamerson also spoke at the gathering regarding MMIP national data and what resources are available for people affected by the crisis. Lamerson touched on efforts like the “Savanna’s Act” signed into law in October 2020, which was passed to improve the federal response to missing or murdered Indigenous persons, including by increasing coordination among federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies. He said throughout the course of the additional training since this was enacted, GTB personnel have developed guidelines and a checklist to follow, including utilizing the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database known as NamUs (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System).
As of June 2023, Lamerson said the NamUs database of missing persons included 820 cases of missing American Indians and Alaska Natives — 256 of which are females, 563 males, and one that was listed as other. Among the 820 missing Native Americans, 112 were 18 years of age or younger at the time they went missing, with 60 being females and 52 males.
“The statistics are pretty sobering,” Lamerson said. “We’ve had additional training in this area, we’ve had a lot of experience investigating missing people both here on tribal properties as well as on nontribal lands. We’re dealing now with more and more trafficking issues that are coming up. So these issues do cover the Grand Traverse Band.”
Scott Scholten, GTB tribal member and community advocate, followed after Lamerson’s comments, and said while the statistics are sobering, they’re unacceptable, and encouraged the public to continue educating themselves on the subject and to use their voice to speak out.
“It’s hard to believe in 2025 that we’re still having a conversation that is not just still there, but MMIP is growing,” Scholten said. “We also understand that this happens in all communities, but we get to have a really big voice in Indian country for this, so I’m really proud and humbled that we take advantage of having that voice because there’s a lot of communities that don’t… When we can have a voice with regards to prevention when it comes to human trafficking, I think we all have a responsibility to our families and community members who have lost and have missing and murdered family members.”
