Missing Murdered and Indigenous Women (MMIW) is a human rights crisis that is currently disproportionately affecting Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. 

Natives American/Indigenous Women and girls are murdered a rate that is 10x higher than all other ethnicities. Also Murder is the 3rd leading cause of death for Indigenous Women according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

Additionally, more than 4 out of 5 Indigenous Women have experienced violence (84.3%) (National Institute of Justice Report) and More than half Indigenous Women experience sexual violence (56.1%).

This leads to the recent surge of gas and oil industries, which has led to the boom of high paying jobs in these sectors. These routes and “man camps” find themselves cutting through or just outside of tribal nations and other marginalized communities.

The connections between the new oil and gas industry pipeline jobs and sexual violence are more direct than people think. As pipeline routes are constructed, “man camps,” or temporary settlements of workers, spring up along its route, with a rush of well-paid outsiders streaming into the surrounding communities. Individuals who live in the camps arrive with no ties to the location or its people.

The man-camp culture is one that exacerbates “isolation, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, misogyny, hyper-masculinity, and racism among the men living there,” according to Indigenous people who live on the reservations near the man-camps. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, numerous studies and witness reports connect these camps with increased rates of sexual violence, harassment, and trafficking. Just last year in 2021, pipeline workers associated with the development of Line 3 were arrested for sex trafficking. Multiple “man camps” loom over a stretch of road dotted with cases of missing Indigenous women, dubbed “The Highway of Tears.” Which is a Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, which has been the location of many missing and murdered Indigenous women beginning in 1970.

This is a human rights issue that impacts all communities not just the indigenous or marginalized groups. These women are our family, friends, coworkers and fellow citizens.

We need change to happen and for a congressional committee to investigate these connections to “man-camps” and the rise of sexual violence in the indigenous community. Every citizen in the United States deserves the right of protection by the government and for justice to be served to the victims families as well as for the offenders.