Abigail Echo-Hawk, MMIW Keynote Speaker

This specific event will take place during National November Native American Heritage Month. To celebrate this month, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) hosts a variety of Native American films, speakers, and workshops.

The November 2019 Native American Heritage Month (NAHM) theme is dedicated to bringing awareness to Murdered Missing and Indigenous Women, Girls, and Trans Women.

All events and activities are open to students, staff, faculty and community members.

This specific event will take place during National November Native American Heritage Month. To celebrate this month, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) hosts a variety of Native American films, speakers, and workshops.

The November 2019 Native American Heritage Month (NAHM) theme is dedicated to bringing awareness to Murdered Missing and Indigenous Women, Girls, and Trans Women.

All events and activities are open to students, staff, faculty and community members.

UIC Affiliates only must register via UIC Connections.

Please see the included link for more information on UIC upcoming 2019 NAHM events.

UIC NAHM 2019 Events: http://go.uic.edu/1NAHM

MMIW Keynote Speaker: 

Ms. Echo-Hawk, M.A., an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, is the Chief Research Officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving American Indians and Alaska Natives in King County, Washington. She also serves as the Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), a Tribal Epidemiology Center whose mission is to support the health and well-being of urban Indian communities through information, scientific inquiry, and technology. UIHI assists a national network of Urban Indian Health Programs, which are private nonprofit corporations that provide native people in select cities a range of health and social services, from outreach and referral to full ambulatory care. Ms. Echo-Hawk directs a staff of public health professionals who work on multiple ongoing research, evaluation, and disease surveillance projects to benefit American Indian/Alaska Natives in urban and rural settings. She received the University of Washington Bothell’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013 for her dedication to eliminating health disparities and was also recognized in the 2015 class of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s (NCAIED) Native American 40 Under 40.

As a dedicated community volunteer, Ms. Echo-Hawk has concentrated on policy and institutional change to eliminate disparities for women of color locally and nationally. She focuses on policy advocacy in areas such as maternal and child health, domestic violence, sexual assault, and health disparities. Volunteer memberships include the Native American Women’s Dialogue on Infant Mortality, Hope Heart Institute, the Center for Indigenous Law and Justice, the Children and Youth Advisory Board of King County, and the Coalition to End Gender-Based Violence.

Ms. Echo-Hawk’s greatest joy is her place within her extended family. She is a wife, mother, auntie, daughter, granddaughter, friend, and community member. She strives to serve her family, friends, and community with love and to be a small part of ensuring a great future for the next generation.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A Snapshot of data from 71 Urban Cities in the United States is a report from Abigail Echo-Hawk and Annita Lucchesi (Southern Cheyenne), of the MMIW Database. This study sought to assess why obtaining data on this violence is so difficult, how law enforcement agencies are tracking and responding to these cases, and how media is reporting on them. The study’s intention is to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the MMIWG crisis in urban American Indian and Alaska Native communities and the institutional practices that allow them to disappear not once, but three times—in life, in the media, and in the data.