BEMIDJI — Nevaeh Kingbird, Jeremy Jourdain, Brandi Lynn, Krista Fisherman, Tim Stone.
These are just a few of the names displayed on signs raised by family members and friends as they marched from Paul Bunyan Park to the Sanford Center on Sunday, May 5, to commemorate National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.
Following the nearly 1.5-mile walk, participants gathered at the event center for a full day of events complete with drum songs, speakers, lunch and breakout sessions covering a variety of topics from art activism to community resources.
Starting things off with a healing song, those in attendance who have been affected or lost a loved one lined up to allow others to pass by, shake their hands and give them words of encouragement.
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
After everyone made their way through the line and the song concluded, organizers gave a few opening remarks before the drum group played the official MMIW 218 song written by Mark Kingbird.
Attendees then migrated into the next room to listen to a panel of event organizers — Audrianna Goodwin, Valahlena Steeprock, Bee Gauther, Simone Senogles, Winona Kingbird and Natasha Kingbird — who detailed the motivation behind adding a full-day conference to the annual event rather than just holding the usual walk.
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
For Senogles, it was simply time to take things to the next level.
“We’ve been doing walks and the community has been supporting us for a long time,” she said. “But we feel it is time to start digging into the root cause, why are we here? What’s happening? Why is this happening to us?”
She added that each year when the events are held, they grow, proving what an impact the issue is having on the community, and how nearly everyone in the room has been affected in some way by missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives.
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
“This is a symptom of colonization, and what happens to our land and our waters happens to our bodies,” she continued. “I see this as a continuation of land grabs, of sexual violence and gender violence as a weapon of war, and we are living with that legacy now, and that’s why we are dealing with MMIW.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show homicide is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native girls and women ages 10 to 24 and the fifth-leading cause of death for Native American women between the ages of 25 and 34 .
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
Senogles said that MMIW 218 is also committed to raising awareness about racism, patriarchy and environmental injustice.
“We are grateful to everyone who is engaged in this work,” she left off. “Thank you to all the families who come and show up every year, who allow us to try to help. We need to keep advocating and we need to keep the stories going. We need to always listen to our relatives. “We care for our community, which is why we do what we do.”
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
One issue raised by Natasha Kingbird is the disconnect they see statistically between the Metro area and rural communities in the northern part of the state, and how crucial it is to continue to bring resources and attention to the region.
“MMIW 218 wants to build relationships with other organizations and agencies from other areas of the state to build collective power,” she added. “We need to build that bridge because when things happen down in the Twin Cities, a lot of their reports and statistics come from the urban areas. “We want to have our own narrative and we want to hear stories on a local level.”
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
She also added how the organization is working to diversify its capabilities to support those in need.
“We have to be able to support them and provide resources for families going into that crisis zone,” Kingbird said. “I know that just having a community here, having other people available in our area, can bring a little bit of ease to those families that are experiencing loss or grief, anything it is that they’re going through.”
Steeprock noted how the disconnect for her since her teenage cousin Nevaeh Kingbird went missing in October 2021 has been related to law enforcement and the government response.
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
“I think that’s one thing that we have to work on, not just us, but the community, the government, and we’re still invisible to them. Like Gabby Petito, when she went missing, she got national coverage right away, literally. For Nevaeh, she’s had no national coverage at all. The only coverage we had when she first went missing was our town — the Bemidji Pioneer was the only one sharing her story.”
She then commented on the obvious absence of law enforcement in the room and at the event.
“There are no police officers here at all,” Steeprock said, gesturing to the room. “We always invite them, but they (rarely) eat. And it just shows us that we’re still invisible to them. And so, this right here, it’s triggering, it’s emotional, but I feel like after we’re done with the panels today, we’re going to lead into that healing and what we can do.”
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
Goodwin shared how she sees healing and progress being made by telling a story of a woman she met while on a recent trip to visit Indigenous tribes in New Zealand with her mother and children.
“I asked her, ‘Do you guys experience missing murdered Indigenous relatives?’ she said, ‘Yes, my girl, we do.’ And I said, ‘Well, what do we do? ‘How do we help solve this problem?’ and her response to me was that we focus on the model, ”Goodwin recalled. “So that’s what I’m here to talk about today, is focusing on the model, those principles of the seventh generation. Because it’s through this model that we’re going to heal and uplift our people.”
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
Goodwin went on to give examples of the good that can come by having principles of vulnerability, looking at the past, present and future, being intentional, having reciprocity, leaning into your gifts, balancing walking in two worlds, having a strong commitment to community and collaboration, along with keeping an intergenerational focus.
“Through sharing our stories we’re able to connect in a different way,” Goodwin said. “We’re sharing them in hopes that people are listening, that organizations, that leaders within our community can hear our stories, so they can bring those stories back into the spaces where policy changes happen. And so we take time away from our families, from our jobs, to be able to contribute. This is grassroots organizing at its finest.”
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
Annalize Braught / Bemidji Pioneer
