COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — Two local organizations, The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) Task Force of Colorado and Sweetgrass Advocacy, hosted the 8th Annual MMIR Walk in the heart of downtown Colorado Springs on Saturday.
The walk comes ahead of the National MMIR Day of Awareness on May 5.
Monycka Snowbird, the Program Director for Sweetgrass Advocacy, told News5 that while she was researching MMIR cases across Colorado, she noticed an alarming trend.
"In 2019, Colorado Bureau of Investigation had 13 cases that they were listing as MMIR for the state of Colorado, but at that time, they were calling it MMIW, and as we started researching...The bulk of the research to find more names and more relatives, we kept finding more native men, and so quickly we realized this is not just a violence against our women, but it's violence against our people," she said. "In Colorado, we have 57% of our MMIR cases that we're tracking are actually men."
They say there are currently around 140 MMIRs in Colorado alone.
"Approximately 200,000 [Indigenous peoples] live across urban non-reservation areas in the state of Colorado alone, and a lot of us live along the Front Range in urban areas like Colorado Springs, Denver, um, those areas," said Raven Payment, MMIR Task Force Member. "So when we're not being acknowledged, um, oftentimes we are misidentified when we do become victims of crime. We're classified as white or Hispanic...so that also makes trends and data hard to follow when law enforcement, media, etc., aren't even identifying us correctly."
Participants each picked a sign with the faces and stories of the many missing and murdered Indigenous people across the state.
The rally began at Acacia Park, and participants walked from the park to City Hall to read the City Council's signed MMIR Proclamation.
From City Hall, the group walked to where a relative was murdered on Pikes Peak Avenue, where they did a prayer for him.
And then the group walked to the MMIR mural by artist Gregg Deal, off of Pikes Peak Avenue, near Cascade.
The MMIR Task Force of Colorado is a volunteer, grassroots organization that provides a variety of services related to MMIRs.
While these task forces span across the country, this group focuses on issues here in Colorado. To contact them, visit their website.
Sweetgrass Advocacy, formerly the Haseya Advocate Program, is a Colorado grassroots organization that provides support to Native survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
To reach out to the organization, visit their website.
For more information on Indigenous people who are missing, have been killed, or if you need to report information on an MMIR, visit the U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs website.
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