This is a People's History of Native America.

With me, Tai Leclaire.

And today we're going to talk about the missing and murdered indigenous peoples crisis, or MMIP.

The MMIP crisis and movement is raising awareness to the alarmingly high rates of murders and missing cases of Native women.

In America, homicide is the third leading cause of death amongst Native girls and women aged 1 to 44, and more than half of Indigenous women experience sexual violence.

Even though Native Americans are only 2.5% of the US population, Native women are ten times more likely to be murdered than any other ethnicity.

But did you know it all began with a cartoon most of us grew up watching?

Pocahontas.

Yeah, that's right, the Disney cartoon.

As a kid, I always loved Disney's Pocahontas because it was the only representation we had on TV.

It was so popular I, too, thought I could talk to trees and animals.

But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit..

But the only true thing about this movie is this: these white men are dangerous.

Disney claimed that Pocahontas was its first animated film “inspired by a real life figure.” And while Pocahontas did exist, her real story has more to do with the MMIP crisis than falling in love with a settler.

In fact, Disney's attempt to create a cartoon princess about “people getting along together” is more destructive to the indigenous narrative, especially once you know that Pocahontas was actually kidnaped, raped and murdered.

Pocahontas’ tribe was the Pamunkey located in present day Virginia.

Her real name was Amonute, but once colonization hit, she became the first case of the MMIP crisis an epidemic that is plaguing almost every Indigenous community on the continent.

Unlike Disney's love story, the real tale of Pocahontas and John Smith is defined by cruelty at the hands of not only Smith, but his entire merry troupe of settlers.

In Disney, there was only one John.

But in reality, there were two johns.

After enduring years of captivity under Smith, Pocahontas was forcibly wed to the other John, John Rolfe.

She was captured for the purpose of sexual and economic exploitation, later having a son with Rolfe.

When her and Rolfe made it to England, she was poisoned at the age of 22.

She never made it home and her body remains in Europe while her descendants still live in Virginia to this day.

What Pocahontas’ story tells us is that the MMIP crisis back then and today is a direct result of the colonization of the Americas.

Wait, but why am I explaining a woman's experience?

Am I mansplaining?

What I need to do is find a Native woman expert.

Are there any around?

Ah-ha, of course there are!

I just found one on Google.

That was easy.

The part that I hate the most about this gig: emailing those with a Ph.D. Dear Cristina, I may not be a woman, wait no.

Okay?

Although I’m a man who needs a woman?

Definitely no.

I'm looking for someone that can help me fill the gaps in my knowledge about the MMIP crisis.

What do I know about the current MMIP crisis?

When we cover protests, you always see a group of women carrying missing and murdered indigenous women and girls signs.

Homicide is the third leading cause of death for American Indian girls.

Dear Cristina, The tragic violence that Indigenous women and girls have experienced amounts to genocide.

I'm researching the MMIP crisis.

Even though MMIW is a movement that was started in Canada, women in Indian Country have been going missing for a long time.

Being a Native person from the land now called Canada myself, Thousands and thousands of women turning up missing or murdered.

Every year.

This ongoing tragedy is extremely close to my heart.

American Indian women are ten times more likely to be murdered.

I want to make sure that the information I present is accurate.

This is absolutely genocidal.

Our women have been going missing since 1492.

Dear Tai, Sure.

Call me whenever.

Here we go.

Hey, Cristina.

Hey, Tai.

What are some of the factors that are leading to the disappearance and death on Indian Reservation?

Precedent was set 500 years ago with Pocahontas.

That if you rape, murder, kill an Indigenous woman, then you're going to get away with it.

And it may even make you a hero throughout history for doing that.

In 1978, the Supreme Court decided a case called Oliphant versus Squamish.

And the Supreme Court ruled that non-Indians cannot be prosecuted on tribal lands.

So that gives license to anyone who is not Native and considered Native women expendable because they know they're not going to get caught.

But what I don't want to do is I don't want to say that we are only ever victims.

Right?

We are again, we are still here.

It amazes me that we are still here in the face of all of this.

What has been done to solve this problem?

So we are taking steps to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore.

But we also need our sovereignty to be strengthened.

Tribes have been able to get grants through the Violence Against Women Act to create our own programs.

Things that we know help will help our own people, because all tribes are very different and what's happening in different reservations are different.

And a lot of tribes don't have reservations.

Why is this issue been underreported for so long?

So I did a study on how federal recognition in tribes is portrayed in the in the media.

And in 40 years, there were only 4,000 stories of federal recognition.

And actually, there are only 20 stories in 40 years in broadcast news.

And so when people don't hear these stories, they don't know about them.

And so it's so much easier to perpetuate the stereotypes.

And then the stories that do come out are the same stories: they’re about poverty, about drunkenness, about welfare.

And it doesn't give the depth of what's happening in Indian Country.

And so it's really easy to miss the story about Missing and Murdered Indigenous People because people just don't know outside.

Unless, unless the outside knows, then it's really hard for us to change anything because then people don't believe us.

Thank you, Cristina.

Tragically, today, there are thousands of stories like Pocahontas out there: Indigenous women who have been ripped from their homes and from those who love them and need them.

Many Native women today have to navigate the justice system between four distinct jurisdictions tribal, municipal, state and federal.

The numbers further expose this tragedy.

Four out of five Native American women experience violence.

One out of three will be raped.

86% of these rapes are by non-Native men.

So when Disney marketed Pocahontas as a love story based on real events and released the film to mark her 400th birthday, it capitalized off a tragic story that completely ignored the reality of a courageous Native woman who suffered way too cruel of fate.

One of the most powerful things taken away from Pocahontas was her agency, and a distorted version of her legacy lives on.

Although we can never give a voice back to all of the MMIP there, we can change how society values Native American women.

That evolution can only begin with the telling of the real story of Pocahontas, the most famous missing Native American woman in history.

It's become a new thing for us to control our own image.

It's about representing ourselves the way we see ourselves.

What we build is grounded in our songs, our language, our ceremonies.

We're engineers.

We're doctors.

We are doing things to make a difference in this world.