Water Protector Legal Collective

MMIW

Today, May 5, marks the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. MMIWG2S is a crisis that Indigenous communities have been naming for generations.

Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit relatives face some of the highest rates of violence in the world:
💔 More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.
💔 The Urban Indian Health Institute reports that 94% have experienced r**e or coercion. Many face lasting impacts, including high rates of su***de attempts and substance use following violence.
💔 Murder remains one of the leading causes of death for Indigenous women, with rates more than 10 times the national average in some regions.

And still, the full scale of this crisis is obscured.

💔 Of 5,712 reported cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in 2016, only 116 were logged in Department of Justice databases.
💔 In 2021, more than 5,200 Indigenous women and girls were reported missing. Federal data remains incomplete, inconsistent, and undercounted.

This violence is systemic, tied to extractive industries, militarization, jurisdictional gaps, and systemic failures that allow harm to continue without accountability. As pipeline expansion and resource extraction increase, so do the conditions that heighten vulnerability and risk for Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit relatives.

What is counted is already devastating. What is not counted or erased, deepens the crisis.

 


Santa Marta marked a shift.

Over 50 countries gathered alongside Indigenous Peoples, movements, and civil society in a space outside formal UN processes, focused not on debating the crisis, but on how to move beyond fossil fuels. Without procedural constraints, the conversation moved closer to reality, where transition is no longer abstract, but political, territorial, and already unfolding.

The Water Protector Legal Collective participated in the Santa Marta Conference alongside Indigenous leaders, governments, and global movements working to define a just transition grounded in rights, accountability, and the protection of land and water.

What emerged was not consensus, but direction. Indigenous Peoples entered with coordination and clarity, advancing a global declaration that sets out concrete standards for what a just transition must require. These are not distant principles. They are conditions that will shape how policies, investments, and decisions take form across regions.

Santa Marta did not resolve the tensions at the center of the transition. It made them visible.

The path forward is being defined now.

At the end of the month, states and stakeholders will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia for the First International Conference on a Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. As the world moves toward renewable energy, a critical question remains:
Who bears the cost?

So-called “green” projects—from lithium mining to large-scale conservation—are often framed as solutions to the climate crisis. But too often, they replicate the same patterns of extraction, displacement, and exclusion that have defined colonialism for generations.

This is Green Colonialism.

Indigenous lands are targeted. Water systems are strained. Communities are left out of decisions that directly impact their futures.
Sustainability cannot be built on injustice.

A just transition must respect Indigenous sovereignty, uphold free, prior, and informed consent, and protect land and water—not as an afterthought, but as a foundation.