Raising Awareness: Honoring the missing and the murdered

In remembrance of missing and murdered indigenous relatives, women, brothers, and children, more than 60 people dressed in red took to the streets of St. Helens to raise attention ahead of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s (MMIW) Day of Awareness on May 5.

The march on May 3 started at Medicine Wheel Recovery Services at 115 Church St. in St. Helens and went in a loop. The marchers consisted largely of clients and staff of Medicine Wheel Recovery Services. The marchers carried signs bearing the names of people who were family members or people they knew who went missing or were murdered.

Cecil Bettles is an Alcohol and Drug Counselor at Medicine Wheel Recovery Services, and he explained the importance of the march.

“We march today to bring awareness to the missing and murdered indigenous women and indigenous people across the nation,” Bettles said. “There’s been too many cases where native indigenous people go missing and there’s no awareness about it.”

Bettles said that only a fraction of cases get media coverage or visibility, and that “far too often” communities and families have to use social media or Facebook to get the word out about missing family members.

“National media coverage is almost nil in regards to if a non-native person goes missing, you have it on ABC news, NBC news, there’s media coverage the next day,” Bettles said.

Bettles also said there are disparities in the criminal justice system regarding the number of native people reported missing. One of the issues is a lack of interagency communication.

“On reservations, that’s federal jurisdiction, so the state can’t go in there. And if the state has information, they can’t operate with the federal government. There’s no real interagency communication,” Bettles said. “In Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation is the only one that has access to the national crime information center. They’re the only ones that can report people missing, whereas the other eight tribes don’t have access to that.”

Bettles also said there is skepticism in native communities about the law enforcement who are supposed to protect them.

Bettles said that the march is important because it brings visibility to the issue, and hopefully people who see them will be inspired to understand more about the movement.

“We can know our own traumas, our own stories, and our own histories, but the more other people know, it’ll get out to the community,” Bettles said. “People will go do some research. They’ll look up, ‘What do the red shirts mean?’ ‘What does the handprint over the face mean?’ That way, it gets more awareness out.”

The role of red is being used to call attention to the invisible – missing and murdered. A red hand over the mouth has become the symbol of a growing movement, the MMIW movement. It stands for “all the missing sisters whose voices are not heard,” according to Nativehope.org. The hand symbolizes “the silence of the media and law enforcement in the midst of this crisis.”

Bettles said that being part of the larger national movement means being connected across “Turtle Island.” Tribes across America are uniting across the nation to let their issues be known. Bettles said that with many native victims, the victims themselves often get blamed.

“When it does get portrayed in the media, it’s usually [portrayed as] the victims’ fault. If a native person goes missing, they were either a ‘drunk’, or a ‘criminal’ or this or that. There’s no actual fair given portrayal,” Bettles said. “It’s never ‘he was a family member, he was a father, he was son, he had a job.’ It’s always a negative and the victim’s fault why they went missing.”

Bettles said it means a lot to be a part of a larger movement that is standing up and bringing awareness to this longstanding issue. One of the biggest things Bettles wanted people to know is that the issue is close to home.

“This isn’t a phenomenon that’s only happening in Canada or the major urban centers. This is happening less than two hours away, three or four hours away on the Umatilla Reservations, and in Yakima. Really, it’s not a way over-there phenomenon, this is impacting Oregonians and families in the state,” Bettles said.