Ethnic Feminicide

Abstract

This paper explores the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls epidemic in Washington State and how the state has failed to address the issue, underlining its complicity and impunity. It takes into account that this epidemic is part of a global crisis of femicide, drawing specifically on the Latin American term, feminicidios, or feminicide, the gender-based murders of women and the state’s impunity in these cases. This paper then names another form of femicide, ethnic feminicde, arguing that the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls epidemic falls under this crisis because of the underlying systemic racism and sexism in state institutions. This paper uses the indigenous methodologies of reframing and intervention, as described by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, to explore this epidemic, reframing it into a transnational feminist issue, not just and indigenous issue, and asking how Washington state, and America as a whole, can intervene, with indigenous leaders taking charge.