"Verbs that will story our bodies into something more than missing": Poetry, Presencing, and #MMIWG2S

Abstract

Abstract:Drawing on the work of Gerald Vizenor and Leanne Simpson, this article examines poetry that addresses the contemporary crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. I argue that #MMIWG2S poetry serves as a mode of "survivance"—a term Vizenor coined to indicate Native strategies of cultural expression that "create an active presence" in the face of colonial denial and erasure—and as a means of "presencing"—a term Simpson uses to indicate methods of "center[ing] and living Indigeneity" through "strategic, thoughtful processes" that produce an Indigenous "present … that is fundamentally different than the one settler colonialism creates." Making Indigenous women visible on their own terms, #MMIWG2S poetry works to extract them from the dehumanizing narratives of settler states. Because #MMIWG2S is in large part an online movement, this article considers uses of social media to disseminate poetry that claims and mourns the missing and murdered, attributes responsibility for their loss to the systemic racism underpinning occupying states, and proposes transformational modes of healing and resistance based in Indigenous knowledge and cultural practice. Analyzing poems by established writers including Marilyn Dumont, Karenne Wood, and Gregory Scofield as well as work by emerging artists such as Tanaya Winder, Helen Knott, and Sākihitowin Awāsis, I find that #MMIWG2S poetry interrogates colonial and contemporary treatment of Native women as violable and disposable in ways that support and supplement parallel grassroots efforts while also offering possibilities for creating empowered Indigenous presents and resurgent futures.