BEMIDJI — Around 100 marchers braved single-digit temperatures Friday, Feb. 14, in Bemidji to commemorate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Awareness Day, celebrated across the country.
The crowd filled the Beaux Arts Ballroom for a multi-faceted program that included presentations on the grim statistics of missing and murdered Indigenous people, hearing from the family members impacted by this violence.
LaKaylee Kingbird is a Leech Lake Tribal College student and one of Nevaeh Kingbird’s sisters. At age 15, Nevaeh disappeared from Bemidji in October 2021, and LaKaylee reflected on Nevaeh’s absence from important milestones.
“My sister now is 18 years old. She's supposed to graduate this year from high school,” LaKaylee said. “I just get very emotional around the holidays because she was a person that really enjoyed giving people gifts on certain days that were special.”
Indigenous women and girls only make up 1% of Minnesota’s population, but they represent around 10% of the state’s murder victims. On any given month, between 27 and 54 Indigenous women and girls may be missing from their communities.
MMIW 218 began organizing annual events on Feb. 14 nine years ago in Bemidji. One of its founders, Audrianna Goodwin, discussed the issue and the group's mission in a Feb. 12 interview with KAXE.
“It doesn't even seem like our little organizing crew has been doing that in the community for this long," Goodwin said. "When we first started, all of them years ago, it was like, in your face. It was as if the community wanted something more.”
Goodwin explained that women make up the core group of organizers for MMIW 218.
“Women in Indigenous communities have a very special relationship, being the life givers, and the women are specifically negatively impacted more by going missing, by being murdered,” Goodwin said. "It was an opportunity for us, as women, to reclaim our roles within community.”
Goodwin shared that the work, while at times very heavy, highlights the importance of creating these types of spaces, not only for the families but the entire community.
“It feels at times the world is against us. And then we gather in community and we see how hard it is for families. But then at the same time, we see the collective strength of community," Goodwin said. "Although it is a sad thing to gather around, we also see pockets of hope, pockets of dreams.”
Across Northern Minnesota, there are unsolved missing persons cases of Indigenous relatives. In Bemidji, cases include missing teens like 16-year-old Jeremy Jourdain who was last seen in 2016. Jeremy’s disappearance will be featured on TV screens at 1,900 gas stations throughout the Midwest next month.
While the issue continues to garner additional attention, with state and federal offices forming around the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples epidemic, Goodwin said there is still a lot of ground to cover on the issue.
"What we've been experiencing, even as of lately, really fighting again for our tribal sovereignty, tribal recognition," Goodwin said. “It’s all of those things that [compound] together that make it easier for society to forget the American Indian people, to forget that we're humans. We've been so dehumanized, so portrayed as something that we're not over time.”
MMIW 218 also hosts annual events on May 5 for the entire community, with last year’s events including an all-day seminar at the Sanford Event Center.
If you have any information about Jeremy, Nevaeh or their disappearances, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or the Bemidji Police Department at 218-333-9111.
