Across America, Indigenous women, girls, and their relatives are in crisis. In the U.S., murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women, who face homicide rates up to 10 times the national average. Many have also gone missing, disappearing from their communities at alarming rates—but without a single federal agency providing reliable, comprehensive data collection, accurate statistics are hard to come by. What we do know is this: It's an epidemic. And for Juliet Rudie, it's personal.
Over the past two decades, the 59-year-old Lower Sioux Indian Community tribal member has lost three cousins. Two were killed—one on Minnesota's Red Lake Nation in 2005 and another on South Dakota's Yankton Indian Reservation in 2017—and another disappeared without a trace in 2017. There's been no sense of closure for Rudie or her extended family; the cases remain open and unresolved to this day, an unfortunately common experience among tribal communities, who have long felt ignored by both the public and public safety officials. But now, Rudie is hoping to tackle this national problem head on as Minnesota's new director of the Office for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives—a first of its kind office in the United States.
Across America, Indigenous women, girls, and their relatives are in crisis. In the U.S., murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women, who face homicide rates up to 10 times the national average. Many have also gone missing, disappearing from their communities at alarming rates—but without a single federal agency providing reliable, comprehensive data collection, accurate statistics are hard to come by. What we do know is this: It's an epidemic. And for Juliet Rudie, it's personal.
Over the past two decades, the 59-year-old Lower Sioux Indian Community tribal member has lost three cousins. Two were killed—one on Minnesota's Red Lake Nation in 2005 and another on South Dakota's Yankton Indian Reservation in 2017—and another disappeared without a trace in 2017. There's been no sense of closure for Rudie or her extended family; the cases remain open and unresolved to this day, an unfortunately common experience among tribal communities, who have long felt ignored by both the public and public safety officials. But now, Rudie is hoping to tackle this national problem head on as Minnesota's new director of the Office for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives—a first of its kind office in the United States. |
|
|
| "So many people talk about how fit I am...but I was excited to see my body change." |
|
|
The jet lag always catches up. |
|
|
| Davidson is really thinking about marriage and kids. |
|
|
| The kids even consult on their mom's fashion products. |
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment