MPR’s Tiffany Hanssen interviews Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan about missing Native American women and girls. Flanagan states it reflects one of the many ways devaluation of native people takes place.
MPR’s Tiffany Hanssen interviews Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan about missing Native American women and girls. Flanagan states it reflects one of the many ways devaluation of native people takes place.
SPEAKER 1: The National Crime Information Center reports that in 2016, there were more than 5,700 reports of missing Indigenous women and girls. Yet the Federal Missing Persons database at the Department of Justice only logged 116 cases. Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is a citizen of the White Earth Nation.
She says that discrepancy shows how Native women and girls are devalued in this country. She told NPR's Tiffany Hanson this morning that dehumanizing can be seen in other ways.
PEGGY FLANAGAN: We have people who are feeling feelings around naming Fort Snelling at Bdote. That's just true and acknowledges the history of that space and place and people getting upset about B.J Mccosker and just having a lake that had always been named that by the original people of this land.
And I think it goes beyond simply being upset about quote unquote, "renaming or revisionist history." What it's actually about when we don't acknowledge the people who are on this land have always been here and, frankly, will always be here, then you are able to dismiss, dehumanize, and then you're not actually doing the work that needs to be done to invest in these communities, to come up with public policies in partnership with these communities. If I don't see you, I don't have to deal with you.
TIFFANY HANSEN: Well, exactly. Right. If I'm not looking at you, I'm not seeing you. You're dehumanized. Then I don't have to keep track of what's happening to you.
PEGGY FLANAGAN: That's right, that's right. And it's maddening. And as the mom of a six-year-old native girl, I want to do everything in my power to make sure that she and other native women and girls are seen, heard, and valued. And I am going to fight passionately to make sure that my colleagues in the Capitol feel the same way.
SPEAKER 1: That's Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. She was speaking on NPR News this morning with Tiffany Hansen. You can hear that entire conversation if you missed any of it at nprnews.org.
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