Rosalie Fish Discusses Running for Indigenous Women Who Have Been Murdered and Missing

Rosalie Fish, a 14-year-old gay Native girl, says she first started jogging down the streets of her neighborhood on the Muckleshoot Reservation in Auburn, Washington, as a means to cope with the melancholy, anxiety, and uncertainty she felt. Fish continues, “Running gave me something that I really appreciated about myself. “I didn’t have a lot of things at the time that made me feel that way, but it made me feel strong and empowered.”

But having no teammates on the cross-country squad at her high school was very taxing. Because she represented a tribal school while participating, Fish recalls feeling alone, suffering from microaggressions, and facing prejudicial assumptions about her abilities. But as time went on, she recalls, “I was able to sort of hold onto running through the toughest phases of my life and start to appreciate watching my times come down in practice.” “I started to see that I could use running as a tool to fight the stereotypes that other people had about me as a Native runner,” the runner says.

Fish’s mission grew substantially in scope during her final year. She observed Lakota runner Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel race in the Boston Marathon in April 2019 while sporting a crimson handprint on her forehead and the letters “MMIW” painted on her legs as a representation of the movement for the release of missing and murdered Indigenous women, according to Indian Country Today .

THE TRANSACTION UNDERNEATH THE RED HAND PRINT Only 116 cases of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were recorded in the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing people database in 2016 despite the National Crime Information Center recorded receiving 5,712 complaints of such cases.

Violence statistics are equally depressing: According to studies from the National Institute of Justice , more than 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetimes, and in some counties, the murder rate for Indigenous women is more than 10 times higher than the national average.

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE’S RESEARCH National Institute of Justice Fish is personally affected by the problem because his aunt Alice Looney vanished in 2004 and was discovered dead more than a year later. A “big, clear moment for me” was watching Daniel commit the entire 26.2 miles to a few of the hurting Native women, she says. It drastically altered the way I looked about running and how I can use it to empower myself and others. “To watch her be shamelessly expressing the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic and to see how she used her running as a platform” (

THE MMIW CRISIS BEING AMPLIFIED BY SPORT A month later, Fish raced in the high school track and field championship of Washington State, dedicating each of her races to a particular Indigenous woman she knew personally who was missing or murdered, including her aunt. Before the meet, Fish, like Daniel, painted a red handprint on her face and the big letters “MMIW” down her leg. She also brought over a hand-made board that had a picture of each woman she was racing for and a few sentences describing their backstory. “Reading” their tales, in Fish’s opinion, let the audience relate to the subject, and as a result, he says, “I witnessed a lot of transformation and a lot of people being reached.”

Unsurprisingly, she recalls, it was a “emotionally hard” encounter. “I remember trying to find ways to disperse myself so that I felt like I could still honor each and every single person I was racing for,” she recalls. “I remember feeling like my heart was heavy, my legs were heavy.” The microaggressions Fish experienced, such as some rivals telling her they admired her “war paint,” she says, added to her tiredness. But at the conclusion of the three-day competition, Fish was still victorious, winning the 800-, 1600-, and 3200-meter state championship titles as well as taking second in the 400-meter race.

PUSHING FOR CHANGE OFF THE PATH Fish persisted despite the discriminatory comments she heard and the emotional strain that came with recognizing individuals of her community. Fish claims that she continually ran her races in support of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women for the remainder of her high school athletic career and her two years at Iowa Central Community College, complete with red paint and poster board. Through Brooks Running’s and Camp4 Collective’s ‘Who Is a Runner?’ video series , she is currently telling her experience and bringing attention to the situation. She plans to continue her activism this winter when she competes as a member of the University of Washington track and field team for the first time. Fish plans to pursue a career after her racing days are over that will allow her to influence laws that directly affect the emergency of missing and murdered Indigenous women, such as laws “that take power away from tribal governments and create loopholes for perpetrators who target women and girls on the reservations,” as she puts it. (

Fish wants everyone to call their representatives and push for the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act , to elevate the voices of activists, and to support groups like the Urban Indian Health Institute since she knows she can’t complete this essential work alone. However, Fish claims that when she begins to feel weighed down by the movement, she remembers the champions who came before her.

“I constantly remember that…where we are today in the progress of Indigenous representation and Indigenous rights is because of the matriarchs in our past,” says Fish. “Whenever I feel like this is too much or maybe I’m not the proper person to facilitate change.” I’m aware that at one point, my forefathers undoubtedly felt the same way, but this isn’t about me. People are the focus.

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