U of L student creates MMIW database

ANNITA LUCCHESI HAS COLLECTED 3,000 ENTRIES

Hundreds of new cases of missing Indigenous women rise every year through situations of domestic and sexual violence in Canada, and a University of Lethbridge doctoral student has used her experience of violence to create a database of the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW).

Annita Lucchesi started the project three years ago, using her own experience to help aid the situation and bring awareness to the amount of MMIW cases that go unresolved in Canada.

“The domestic violence almost killed me and I almost became of the women on this list,” said Lucchesi, in a media release. “If that happened to me, I would want my story to have meaning; I would want it to be used in the struggle to make sure that other women and girls don’t experience that, too.”

Continuously adding more names and information to the database, Lucchesi has collected around 3,000 entries of MMIW, including their names, where they lived, if they were a mother, if other women in their family went missing or were murdered, if they experienced domestic violence and any other pertinent details.

“The idea is to have a comprehensive resource for not just researchers like me, but also for policy makers and service providers who are doing the onthe-ground work to address the issue,” said Lucchesi. “In Canada and the United States, but particularly in Canada, the issue of missing and murdered native women is something that gets talked about quite a bit but there’s no reliable data or analytics for it. That’s the gap that I'm trying to fill.”

Lucchesi says the database so far does a better job at identifying the holes in the data rather than providing any new conclusions. In some cases the information about missing women is contained in federal or national databases, and isn’t shared with local forces that have jurisdiction over missing persons cases.

She has requested records from law enforcement officers, and has learned about MMIW cases from news articles, missing persons databases, social media accounts, archival sources and from family members.

“That’s been a really challenging and also illuminating process of seeing just how poor the records are . . . and the kind of negligence, racism and sexism that existed in police departments,” she said.

Lucchesi hopes that by making state and provincial leaders aware of the scope of the problem, that it will eventually lead to changes.

“I don’t think I’d be doing this work if I thought nothing would ever change,” said Lucchesi.

“But I also understand it’s going to take a long time and the likelihood of any immense change in raters of violence anytime soon is not high. People have asked me when I'm going to be done and I say ‘When native women stop getting murdered.’”

Lucchesi is working on a doctorate in Cultural, Social and Political Thought under the supervision of Jan Newberry. With course work completed, Lucchesi is now planning to do fieldwork in native communities, on and off reserve, in Canada and the U.S. She plans to host workshops where people will create community maps to tell stories about MMIW and how they are affected.

“The idea for the final product is to have a beautiful atlas of thematic maps created by community members telling their perspectives on the issue,” she said.

“This work is important because women are dying. It shouldn’t be that way and I hope it is healing not just for native communities but all of our communities as they grapple with this in a substantive way and create something healthier and safer.”