The Indian Wars never ended, they just changed tactics

 
From PZ Myers:

For last weekend’s Washington State 1B track and field championships, Rosalie Fish painted a red handprint over her mouth, the fingers extending across her cheekbones. On her right leg, she painted the letters “MMIW,” standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

It’s an epidemic right now. Imagine if a town the size of Morris, Minnesota were wiped out every year…but these deaths are scattered and spread out among a neglected population.

MMIW seeks to address the issue of the thousands of indigenous women who are missing or were murdered. According to a report by the Urban Indian Health Institute, 5,712 of these cases were reported in 2016, but only 116 were put into the U.S. Department of Justice database. With 71 cases, Washington was second only to New Mexico, which had 78 cases of murdered or missing indigenous women.

I can imagine it: the reservations in Washington state are in many ways isolated, populated with poor people, but at the same time penetrated with highways and outsiders are encouraged to visit to buy cheap cigarettes or gamble, so some of the worst people from the outside are cruising through the place. Then there’s the problem of jurisdiction…if some predator is looking for prey no one with power will care about, reservations are targets of opportunity.

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