Native Americans call for action against violence, trafficking of indigenous women

New York, Oct 20 : Indigenous Americans urged efforts against long-standing violence and sex trafficking of indigenous women during the third Annual National Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Parade here on Saturday.

"We're still going missing and we're still not being reported as missing," Junise Golden Feather Bliss, a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, told Xinhua at the parade, which was attended by Native Americans from over ten tribes from the US, Canada, and Central and South America.

In the US, 40 per cent of the women who are sex trafficked are identified as Native, and Native women are constantly being targeted by violence with 96 per cent of cases not reported, Bliss said, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We're here to bring awareness of the 'red hand movement' that's been going across Indian country. Too many of our women have been gone, missing and murdered since historical times," Bliss said.

A group of participants held a banner reading "No more stolen sisters" and "healing prayers." Bliss said that a healing prayer was held with the hope that the next generations would be able to find the clan mothers, the traditional elders and resources.

Besides allocation of resources, attention should be paid to policy and data collection to address the issue, she said.

Organised by the Lenape Native Americans, the half-day parade marched through traditional Lenape hunting grounds from Madison Square Park to Union Square along Broadway. Indigenous Americans demonstrated their costumes, music, dances and storytelling.

"We honour all the indigenous people of the world. ... Anybody that's been through genocide, anybody that has been put down by another culture," said Carla Alexander, chief of the Deer Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

"We try to lift all the cultures so that everybody gets along in love and peace," said Alexander.

Atsila Firebird Graywolf noted that New York City has thousands of Indigenous people who live off Indian reservations. "People don't think that Native Americans still exist or we don't celebrate," Graywolf said.

"The parade gives us an opportunity to show our beauty and that we're still here," Graywolf added.

A group of Native Americans chanted "We're still here" during the parade. The words were also printed on some participants' T-shirts.