4/5 Indigenous Women have experienced violence. Indigenous women and girls go missing at a much higher rate than any other group in the United States. Indigenous men also disappear at a higher rate than other males.
This is a manifestation of the enduring legacy of trauma and colonization that settlers have wreaked upon their Indigenous siblings, as well as an issue inextricable from the climate crisis.
Learn more from Justice Nichols, Program Coordinator for Indigenous and Tribal Ministries for the ELCA and Brenda Blackhawk, Director of Communications at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, in our May 2025 Connections Call.
See Justice Nichol’s MMIW Accounts to Follow
In 2021, as a follow-up to the 2016 Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the ELCA Church council adopted the Declaration to American Indian and Alaska Native People by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It reads, in part:
“…We commit to advocacy for and being in solidarity with Tribal Nations, MMIWGR organizations, families, and friends who have gone missing or who have been murdered.”
Read more about our Christian calling to our sisters here.