MMIP Healing & Response teams
special initiative
Our MMIP Healing & Response Teams Initiative will build on existing Tribal care systems to create a model that can be adapted to support a variety of Tribal communities and organizations.
The Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition (MIWSAC) is spearheading the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Healing and Response Teams Special Initiative under the OVW FY24 program in partnership with the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) and Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center (AKNWRC). This initiative, inspired by the Not Invisible Act Commission’s recommendations, aims to address the critical issue of violence against American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women and communities.
Meet the MMIP HRT Pilot Sites
Waking Women Healing Institute
What is Waking Women Healing Institute's mission, and how do you work to carry it out?
Waking Women Healing Institute’s mission is to protect against, heal from, and illuminate the impacts of settler colonialism that result in violence against Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit relatives, Water, and Mother Earth. We do this by restoring traditional matriarchal roles, Indigenous governance, and systems of care that honor mind, body, spirit, and emotion for the 7th Generation.
Our work is guided by the heart–rooted in our cultural ways of being, and carried out in ceremony, relationship, and responsibility. We walk alongside our relatives to help them reconnect with their gifts, restore their voice, and find peace rooted in identity, belonging, and ancestral strength.
Through land-based healing, cultural revitalization, and intergenerational learning, we create spaces for truth, care, and transformation. We offer tools, teachings, and collective practices that address trauma at its roots while empowering communities to lead their own healing and futures.
What is your organization's vision of an MMIP Healing & Response Teams model?
Our vision is to build a community-rooted MMIP HEaling & Response Teams model that begins locally and grows into a framework for regional and national response. In the coming year, Waking Women Healing Institute will launch our first official cohort of responders–beginning with participation in our 3-day MMIWP Healing & Response Training. This foundational training equips participants with cultural and practical tools for navigating justice systems, supporting families, and organizing community-based responses rooted in healing.
Following the initial training, the cohort will continue with monthly learning circles, access to specialized training, and guided healing retreats to deepen their readiness for response work. We will also provide tools we’ve developed–including our Case Documentation Process, MMIWP Toolkit, and Digital Resource Map–to ensure teams have what they need to respond with care, clarity, and cultural strength.
This first cohort will not only support local response efforts, but also help us gather the data, practices, and outcomes necessary to grow a responsive, culturally grounded model that can be share across tribal nations. Our goal is to prepare healing-centered teams who walk with survivors and families–ready to respond, advocate, and protect the sacred, from the grassroots to the national level.
Dena' Nena Henash Tanana Chiefs Conference Tribal Protective Services (TCC)
What is TCC's mission, and how do you work to carry it out?
Tanana Chiefs Conference provides a unified voice in advancing sovereign tribal governments through the promotion of physical and mental wellness, education, socioeconomic development, and culture of the Interior Alaska Native people.
TCC’s Tribal Protective Services upholds this mission by providing trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and individualized services to Alaska Native individuals and families impacted by crime. We honor each person as the expert of their own experience and support their healing by empowering their choices and restoring personal agency throughout their journey.
What is your organization's vision of an MMIP Healing & Response Teams model?
Our vision for the MMIP Healing Response Team (HRT) Model is to ensure that families of missing and/or murdered Indigenous people have a dedicated advocate from the very first contact with law enforcement through every stage of the search, investigation, and, if applicable, trial. This advocate will serve as a consistent point of contact–helping record and track critical information, coordinate with agencies, amplify the family’s voice, and ensure that basic needs are met. Most importantly, the advocate will provide steady, compassionate support throughout an unimaginably painful and complex process.
Southwest Indigenous Women's Coalition (SWIWC)
What is Southwest Indigenous Women's Coalition (SWIWC)'s mission, and how do you work to carry it out?
Southwest Indigenous Women’s Coalition (SWIWC) is a statewide tribal domestic and sexual violence coalition serving the tribes in Arizona since 2006. SWIWC’s primary purpose is to help tribes increase their capacity to better address and respond to the violence occurring in their respective communities. This is achieved through training, technical assistance, policy advocacy, education, and outreach. SWIWC’s vision is to have safe Indigenous communities. Our mission is to increase the capacity of Indigenous communities to address and respond to violence through education, training, technical assistance, policy advocacy, and culturally responsive supportive services. At present SWIWC has an amazing staff of ten, and a remarkable governing board, that are dedicated to meeting the needs of tribes within an anti-oppression framework. We are the small, but mighty SWIWC.
What is your organization's vision of an MMIP Healing & Response Teams model?
Our vision for the MMIP HRT is to center, nurture, and support Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) families through culturally rooted responses and trauma informed healing pathways as they pursue justice, healing, and resources.
Watch our MMIP HRT Info Session
The MMIP HRT focuses on cases intersecting with the following crimes:
- Domestic violence
- Dating violence
- Sexual Assault
- Stalking
Goals of MMIP HRT
To establish victim-centered, trauma-informed, culturally responsive service pathways, and to enhance intergovernmental coordination in cases of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Persons.
MIWSAC seeks to empower communities and service providers to respond effectively to MMIP cases, ultimately promoting justice, healing, and self-determination for AI/AN communities.
Please contact Melissa Skeet, MIWSAC MMIP Project Coordinator, at [email protected] for more information.
This project is supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-24-GK-00993-INNO awarded by the Office of Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed on this webpage are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.