During the International Women’s March, UNC’s Dawn Knickerbocker presented on the realities of Indigenous women. Dawn speaks to her audience in Cincinnati, Ohio, a place where removal happened not once, but twice. In Ohio there are no reservations, reserves or boundaries. Ohio is a land where the council fires have been smothered.
Dawn discusses what allows Native women to be targeted and treated as disposable without consequence in the United States. She addresses underlying dynamic promoted by Colonization. Colonization is an ideology that supports the dehumanization of those living on the land and their dispossession, murder, and forced assimilation. And this is ongoing - not something for the history books.
Dawn Knickerbocker, Board President of Greater Cincinnati Native American Coalition speak on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, girls & Two Spirits.
Daily, cis and transgender women, femme-identified, and non-binary people encounter violence at the hands of institutions and workplaces that continue to perpetuate inequities and injustice. While we claim to be progressing forward, thousands of Indigenous, Black, and trans women are missing or have been murdered. The number of women and children who are evicted from their housing is soaring while at the same time, they are plummeting further into poverty. Women are dying from being denied reproductive rights and from receiving culturally incompetent health care. Women with disabilities are twice as likely to be poor as compared to women without disabilities. Working class women continue to suffer from sexual harassment, gaps in pay, and inadequate health insurance. The number of Black and Latinx women who are being incarcerated is growing faster than any other population. Women are being denied access to clean and unleaded water due to environmental racism.
Our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our planet, those who give life to this world, are experiencing pain and loss. They are disappearing and dying. We cannot continue to ignore the struggle and the violence against our women. Our suffering and our rage can no longer be silenced. We deserve justice. We deserve liberation. We deserve to live.
Now more than ever, we need an effective women’s rights movement. We must engage in conversations that will challenge institutions and workplaces, as well as our own beliefs and behaviors. We must build momentum within our communities in hopes that they will lead to impactful mass actions. A mass movement for women’s rights is necessary to attack the patriarchal and racist systems. A mass movement is necessary to protect, defend, and mobilize for our rights.
As we build, we cannot be deterred from our fight for equity and justice. We must join forces to improve the health and well-being of not just women and children, but everyone. Through our commitment to comfort, support, love, and heal one another, we will win.
Join the collective efforts of all who care about women and human rights. On March 8th, International Women’s Day, we will gather to declare our calls to action and build plans for a movement for cis and trans women, femme-identified, and non-binary people. Let this day be the beginning of a long-lasting movement for women’s liberation.
