05-05-2025
Indigenous activist brings awareness to violence in native communities
OKEMOS, Mich. (WLNS) — Activists are raising awareness for missing and murdered indigenous people as they prepare for .
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Day, also known as Red Dress Day, brings attention to the violence that native women and girls face throughout the country, including Michigan.
'And red is the color in our teachings that is most recognizable by the spirit. Those in the spirit realm who've walked on. The awareness that we needed is that there is so much of a scourge in our community of women and girls and people and relatives who go missing,' says Tribal Citizen Nichole Keway Biber.
Biber, of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa, says she is focused on fighting for indigenous women who she says have been wronged by corporations.
She says oil companies play a big role in the loss of indigenous people.
'Often when there's pipelines going into communities or even to expand them or move them. They come with something called man camps, and that puts indigenous women in particular in a vulnerable space. There's not a lot of law enforcement looking out for our women. That's very much connected to those oil pipelines is why our people go missing,' said Biber.
She says these companies employ out-of-town labor to work in rural communities that are home to many native people, 'There was an encampment of Indigenous water protectors looking to stop that oil pipeline.'
She says there's a worry of sexual violence that comes with these workers, 'They were found out that there was human trafficking that occurred with that, and then in a very small span of time there were breaches in the aquifer. People were taken, and the water was damaged.'
A study in the found that these kinds of construction projects can make the problem of sexual violence in indigenous communities drastically worse.
According to the , cases of missing or murdered indigenous women are under-reported, under-investigated and often remain unsolved.
Biber says Red Dress Day brings awareness and remembrance to the countless native women who go missing without a trace.
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