Indigenous Embodied Activism and Memory Politics for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Abstract

This study aims to understand material and symbolic communication approaches surrounding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), and the Indigenous and feminist memory work to honor MMIW. Indigenous women and girls in Canada have gone missing and have been murdered at six times the rate of their non-Indigenous counterparts. First Nations and Indigenous communities in Canada have engaged in protests and memory activism to raise awareness of violence against Indigenous women and seek increased support from the criminal justice system. Following an Indigenist and decolonizing memory work methodological approach developed by Gail Baikie (Inuit) and the rhetoric of survivance of Gerald Vizenor (Anishaabe), we analyze the Search the Landfill current protests at the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Winnipeg police reported they believe four MMIW women’s remains are in the landfill. The study is vitally important as these protests and Indigenous advocacy efforts have never been analyzed and efforts continue to unfold. Analysis centers on public discourse on MMIW, counter/memory resistant efforts, embodied activisms of the protestors, efforts to silence and—literally—bury MMIW, and an understanding of how memory activism can amplify hushed narratives and energize counterattacks against erasures of memory.