On May 5, 2025, Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell (NAISAC) hosted a vigil honoring the lives of and calling for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous people. The event drew a crowd of about four dozen Native American and Indigenous Cornell students and their allies.
Through the vigil, NAISAC members hoped to bring renewed awareness to the disproportionate rates of abduction and murder that Indigenous communities face. According to the National Institute of Justice, on some reservations, women and girls are murdered at a rate ten times the national average. Furthermore, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center received 10,248 missing Native American and Indigenous persons entries in 2024 alone; almost 7,000 of these entries were for people under twenty-one years old. However, data on this issue is often incomplete due to, as NAISAC co-Chair Paige Peters described it, “a lack of reporting, a lack of analysis, a lack of understanding, and as a result, a lack of action.”
The vigil commenced with a moment of silence. Participants were then encouraged to write the name of a missing or murdered Indigenous loved one and place it in a basket at the center of the circle. By the time every participant had finished writing, the basket was full.
The floor was then opened to participants who felt inclined to share a poem, a story, or simply a name with the group. Some spoke of high-profile cases; many spoke of relatives, neighbors, and friends, emphasizing both the legacies of their loved ones and the need for more efforts to bring missing Indigenous people home.
Cornell University, the site of the event, was founded by the federal government on stolen Indigenous land. As of now, Cornell University has not fully acknowledged the circumstances of its founding, nor has it offered restitution to the Native American and Indigenous communities impacted.
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