I’ll be dedicating this year’s Boston Marathon, 26.2 miles, to 26 missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples. Here, you will learn who I am running for and ways to support the families, survivors and community advocates in taking action.

Putting it in Perspective:

- In 2016, 5,712 Indigenous women and girls were reported missing, 116 were reported into the Department of Justice Database (by the Urban Indian Health Institute)
- 86% of Indigenous women will experience violence in their lifetime
- Under-reported, under-funded
- Homicide is the third leading cause of death for Native peoples
- 4 in 5 MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls) cases are in counties intersecting the Keystone XL pipeline - showing a direct connection with the epidemic of violence and the perpetrators funding fossil fuels that contributes to the climate crisis
- 84% of women and girls experience violence in our lifetime (myself included)
- 56% of women and girls experience sexual violence
- 86% of perpetrators are non-Native people
- Indigenous people are dying at a rate 10 times higher than any other race or group
- And as Annita of Sovereign Bodies Institute put it so perfectly, it's not just a fight for justice for our relatives and their families, it's a fight for representation - "our relatives go missing 3 times: once in life, in the data and in the media."

MAY 5TH - NATIONAL DAY OF AWARENESS FOR MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN, GIRLS AND RELATIVES

TAKE ACTION with NIWRC / Shareable Resources for you via NIWRC:
+ Download the ‘No More Stolen Sisters’ poster and share a photo of yourself wearing red and/or traditional attire with the poster on social media using #MMIWGActionNow, #NoMoreStolenSisters and #MMIWG
+ Explore MMIW Toolkit for Understanding and Responding to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women for Families and Communities.
+ Learn more about the crisis of MMIW with the Restoration Magazine Special Edition: Missing and Murdered Women
+ Share StrongHearts Native Helpline (1-844-762-8483) with relatives facing domestic, dating or sexual violence. Online chat is available at strongheartshelpline.org.
+ Read “Advocacy in Action: 6-Point Action Plan” by NIWRC
+ Find MMIW State Legislation with the MMIW Legislative Tracker
+ Sign petition to declare December 6 as the International Day to End Femicide
+ Learn more about Savanna’s Act: https://www.niwrc.org/resources/fact-sheet/savannas-act
+ Learn more about Not Invisible Act: https://www.niwrc.org/resources/fact-sheet/not-invisible-act
+ View War on Indigenous Women: A Short Guide for Journalists Reporting on MMIWG

Rising Hearts is honored and grateful to bring the community together to honor, uplift, and send prayers for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, their families, and for the advocates within these spaces - their dedication and their heart work to support the families, communities, the advocacy and finding solutions to end this epidemic.

In 2021, we were able to raise $75,000+! This is all thanks to the many participants that supported this event and campaign for awareness, and our Indigenous communities. We were able to donate over $30k to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, $16k to Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, as well as nearly a dozen $1500 - $600 donations to multiple MMIR families, advocates, survivors and organizations, doing the heart work to fight for justice and end this violence. In 2022, we were able to donate just over $21k to NIWRC, Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Sovereign Bodies Institute and more.  Let’s do that again this year and reach our big fundraising goal to give back!

We have many voices doing this heart work to advocate and fight for a better future for our next generations.  We continue to educate, advocate, create content, uplift, and build community to work towards that future together. This epidemic of violence has impacted our communities, across colonial borders, and is impacting so many families, whose stolen relatives have been erased, who are invisible (outside of Indigenous communities), families and relatives who experience racism on so many levels, and continue to not get the platform and space to be seen, heard, and fought for.  We can change that. Be in community with us! Join us for this run/walk/event and be sure to join us in all the virtual events that are being organized for the week of action that you can participate in and learn from.

The 2023 Beneficiaries that we are giving back to are: National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Sovereign Bodies Institute, Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center and Rising Hearts - No More Stolen Relatives Initiative.

Virtual and In person locations included!

perpetuate the erasure and invisibility of Indigenous peoples, lack of support and response from those needing to do something to support the families, and the continued problem of erasure of Indigenous peoples across all platforms where we are fighting to exist and be heard, especially as the first peoples of these lands that were stolen.

Now, this epidemic, directly intersects with the legacy of residential and boarding schools that were created and thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly taken or stolen from their families. To date, over 7,000 Indigenous children have been unearthed from Boarding and Residential school properties in the last several months. This injustice, rooted in colonialism and intersects with missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, and the need to conquer, led to policies of genocide, forced removal, diseases, theft of lands and bodies, as well as the quote and policy that started the boarding schools – “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” This was a policy to colonize and force Indigenous peoples to become civilized, strip them of their culture, their language, their traditions, and their Indigenous names – having to choose a Christian name. This run is to honor and remember this history that doesn’t get the visibility it needs, to shine light on the injustice that continues to take place, to build community and allyship, and to call for justice, accountability, healing, and to bring all relatives back to their communities by searching all boarding and residential school properties. You can learn more about this troubling history from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition here. Rising Hearts will continue to advocate and uplift the resources, the voices, advocates, and organizations doing this work while continuing to organize and cultivate community. We hope with our advocacy and grassroots organizing, is to creating pathways and platforms to distribute resources and share knowledge and promote intersectionality.

Sovereign Bodies Institute : Reports - Zuya Wicayuonihan / Honoring Warrior Womxn & MMIWG2 and MMIP Organizing Toolkit

Urban Indian Health Institute & the MMIWG Report

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center

Tribal Law and Policy Institute

Minnesota Indigenous Women’s Resource Center