GRIID Interview with Indigenous Youth Organizer of the MMIP Rally & March: Genocide isn’t just something that happened to my people in the past, it is happening right now!

On Friday, May 5th, beginning at 6pm, there will be a rally and march for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) in Grand Rapids.

There have been several held in Grand Rapids in the past, or related issues, such as an event the Indigenous community organized after the new revelations about US & Canadian so-called Boarding Schools in June of 2021. Last year, we interviewed two indigenous activists after an MMIP event was held, where a Grand Rapids government official spoke just one month after the GRPD had murdered Patrick Lyoya during a routine traffic violation. 

This year GRIID interviewed the lead organizer, Jade Green, who sat down with us earlier this week to talk about the event and why the issues that the rally/march addresses are so important for both the Indigenous community and the dominant community. Below is a video interview with Jade, but we are including the questions we asked them in the interview.

• Can you talk a bit about what exactly the MMIP Youth Rally and March will be about and what it is an urgent matter? 
• Why do you think that this issue hasn’t received the same kind of attention that other BIPOC issues have received, at least not outside of Indigenous communities? 
• What do you think are the underlying factors, the root causes Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons? 
• How is the MMIP connected to the ongoing issue of settler colonialism of Indigenous land and communities? 
• I was at a mostly white organized Climate Justice march last week, where they did an Indigenous land acknowledgement, but failed to address how Indigenous people are at the forefront of the Climate Justice Movement. What do you think about land acknowledgements?
• Are there demands coming out of this rally/march, and if so can you name them?
• What are the most important things you want people to know/think about after coming to the march/rally?
• Last question, why is this issue so important to you personally?