The Silent Story of Indigenous Women from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-first.
the Toxic Colonialist Cycle:
(An opinion piece)
Screaming. Running. Captive. Powerless.
This is what became of Indigenous women—once revered, now stripped of autonomy. They were leaders, warriors, and the lifeblood of their communities, yet colonialism reduced them to shadows, stolen from history and erased from their own narratives. Freedom, a right so fundamental it should never be questioned, became an unattainable luxury for Native women. Their suppression—both literal and figurative—led to their disappearance. And with silence comes escalation. Without acknowledgment, the problem festers.
This writer's mission is simple: to remind the world who Native women once were and to expose the colonial forces that have worked tirelessly to dismantle their power. Their oppression is not an artifact of the past—it is a wound that continues to bleed. To understand how Indigenous women were stripped of their status, we must travel back in time and uncover the ways in which they were perceived, respected, and ultimately dehumanized.
Reclaiming a Warrior Queen
One of the most powerful figures in this history is Pocasset Sachem Weetamoo, a warrior queen whose leadership was undeniable. An article titled “As Potent A Prince as Any Around Her: Rethinking Weetamoo of the Pocasset and Native Female Leadership in Early America” reclaims the truth about her. In stark contrast to colonial depictions, Weetamoo was not a villain—she was a force to be reckoned with.
The negative perception of Weetamoo largely stems from Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of Captivity where she is painted as a “spiteful, vain antagonist.” Yet, the reality was far different. Weetamoo had secured the respect and unwavering loyalty of her people. Her authority mirrored European structures of rank and influence, where “status and lineage could transcend gender barriers” (Martino-Trutor, 2015, p. 38). She was not merely tolerated as a female leader—she was revered.
Both the colonists and Native forces recognized her power. William Hubbard, a colonist who sought to sway her allegiance, attempted to recruit her to the English cause. Weetamoo did not submit. Her loyalty was to her people, and they, in turn, stood by her. Her influence was so commanding that nearly 300 warriors followed her into battle—a force equal to that of Prince Philip, who led barely the same number of men (Martino-Trutor, 2015, p. 44). That alone speaks volumes.
Sacred Role of Indigenous Women
Weetamoo was not an exception. She was part of a legacy of Indigenous women who commanded respect, not only as rulers but as the architects of life itself. Their power was undeniable—so undeniable, in fact, that colonial forces made it their mission to erase them.
And so began the cycle of suppression.
Respect for women extended far beyond leadership—it was woven into the very fabric of life itself, seen in the reverence for menstruation and motherhood.
According to Mother of All the Living, a girl’s first menstruation was not met with disgust or secrecy but with celebration, a stark contrast to Old Testament ideologies that would banish a woman from her village when she received her monthly cycle, a shame that the puritan culture held over women. But with the Indigenous, it marked her passage into womanhood, a moment of honor that was recognized with ceremony. This was a time to rejoice, to guide, to prepare. She was taught new skills, further integrating her into the village, strengthening both her place and her purpose.
Motherhood, too, was a sacred rite of passage. A mother’s role was not merely to bear children—it was to cultivate a home of care, nourishment, and structure. It was through her that life, knowledge, and tradition flowed. As Denial (2019) explains, “An organized household in which there was a community, care, food, and a place to sleep…what a mother provided her children was passed down through the family when she died…when her children died and her grandchildren” (p. 447). The impact of a mother was eternal, stretching across generations.
Birth was not just a biological event—it was an act of creation, and for that, mothers were celebrated. They were honored for bringing new life, for the burden they carried, for the love they gave. Their role was so integral that even in Ojibwe creation stories, the foundation of life itself was built upon the presence of a mother. Mother Earth could only flourish through her children, just as the survival of the tribe depended on the strength of its women. To honor women was to honor the very continuation of existence.
So, how did we get here?
How did women go from leaders, life-givers, and revered mothers to broken souls, stripped of their power, so much so that they go missing without anyone batting an eye?
System by Design
The European arrival in America was not just an invasion of land—it was an invasion of ideology. Settlers expected to find submissive, fragile women, reflecting the Eurocentric-patriarchal order they knew. Instead, they encountered powerful women, standing as equals to their male counterparts. This was unacceptable. So, they found a way to break them.
The assimilation of Native women became a tool for domination. The U.S. government added an addendum to the Dawes Act, stating that any Indigenous woman who married a Euro-American man would be forced to abandon her Native identity—along with her children (Le May, 2018, p. 6). This wasn’t just a legal clause; it was a weapon.
Marriage became a tactic, an incentive for settlers to strip Native women from their communities and sever them from their land. But marriage did not protect them—it made them more vulnerable. By the 1930s, reports of domestic abuse against Indigenous women surged. Yet, this violence was normalized. Marriage acted as a legal loophole—any harm inflicted by a husband was excused, dismissed as part of a wife’s duty. Society blamed the women, further alienating them, silencing them, and stripping them of any recourse.
For many, marriage became a means to control land, property, and inheritance. In the case of the Osage people, white settlers used marriage as a strategic method to gain access to the oil wealth that flowed from Osage land. Men, often with the approval of the law, married Indigenous women only to exploit their resources. Some went even further—murdering their wives to inherit their land and wealth. This brutal practice reached its peak during the Osage murders, where dozens (Historian Jessie Kratz estimates the death toll to be around 60) of Osage women were killed by their husbands or other settlers, motivated by the desire for wealth and control.
A marriage certificate became a consent form to suffering, not protection. The violence against Indigenous women did not fade—it was simply legalized, hidden behind closed doors, and institutionalized. It remains today, a cycle of oppression that refuses to break.
From Genocide to Modern-Day Disappearances: The Facts
Driven by the need to escape, the women sought freedom, desperately hoping for a better life. However, freedom often proved an illusion and only offered them a different type of prison. According to an informant for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, many were simply “moving from abusive relationship to abusive relationship.” When they did manage to break free, the weight of their reality became undeniable.
Survival was never a choice—it was a fight.
For generations, Indigenous women have faced a relentless war against their very existence. Stripped of resources, community, and protection, many were forced into prostitution—not as an escape, but as a last resort in a system that offered them no safety, only a different form of captivity. This entrenched a vicious, colonial-born stigma—one that painted them as disposable, their bodies as currency, their lives as something to be used and discarded.
Sex trafficking became their silent executioner. This is not a coincidence. This by design, because no one was looking out for these women.
The Violence and Sexualization of Indigenous Women
The earliest encounters between European settlers and Indigenous women were not romantic but violent. In the beginning, settlers came here and learned and befriended the Indigenous, but it wasn’t long until the tides turned they sought to take complete control; even of their bodies. A chilling account from Christopher Columbus' associate, Michele de Cuneo, lays bare the horror:
"She being naked, as is their custom, I conceived desire to take my pleasure. I wanted to put my desire to execution, but she was unwilling for me to do so, and treated me with her nails in such [ways] that I would have preferred never to have begun. But seeing this… I took a rope-end and thrashed her well, following which she produced such screaming and wailing as would cause you not to believe your ears. Finally, we reached an agreement such that, I can tell you, she seemed to have been raised in a veritable school of harlots" (33).
This passage exemplifies the brutality Indigenous women faced—not only from desire but from gendered violence when that desire was absent. When Indigenous women were not seen as objects of lust, they were treated as obstacles to be erased.
At a conference, Angela Davis recounts a harrowing scene in which a pregnant women was murdered and she describes it as this:
“One woman, big with child, rushed into the church, clasping the altar and crying for mercy for herself and unborn babe. She was followed, and fell pierced with a dozen lances... the child was torn alive from the yet palpitating body of its mother, first plunged into the holy water to be baptized, and immediately its brains were dashed out against a wall.”
This was not a mere act of war. This was genocide—one that targeted women’s bodies as a means of erasure. These atrocities did not happen in isolation. The Yuki people were decimated, not only through murder but through disease, sexual violence, family separation, sodomization, and forced sterilization. Women—once revered as life-givers—were stripped of bodily autonomy, leadership, and the ability to celebrate womanhood and motherhood.
But the violence did not end. It evolved. A woman, violated and beaten, her suffering reduced to a lesson in submission. Her screams—the cries of countless others—were either unheard or ignored, dismissed as the natural order of conquest.
This was the fate of Indigenous women—from warriors and revered mothers to captives, degraded and powerless. How does a world go from revering women as leaders, mothers, and protectors of life—to treating them as disposable?
The answer is clear: systemic, intentional erasure.
The Colonial Dismantling of Indigenous Women’s Power
The insidious erasure of Indigenous women’s power began with the dismantling of their narratives, starting with Weetamoo. While Mary Rowlandson’s account contributed to this, historians suggest that her portrayal of Weetamoo stemmed more from cultural misunderstanding than outright defamation. Rowlandson, shaped by a patriarchal society, failed to comprehend the balance of power between Native men and women. What she perceived as hostility may have simply been the result of a dynamic foreign to her—a world where women could hold authority, command loyalty, and lead warriors into battle.
But the direct assault on Weetamoo’s legacy came from William Hubbard, the same man who once sought her allegiance. When he recorded the deaths of Weetamoo and Prince Philip, his words dripped with bias. He painted Philip as a formidable warrior, describing his body as strong, calling him “a Savage and wild beast” whose very presence exuded the aura of a “messenger of death”—a grudging nod of respect to his warrior spirit.
Weetamoo, however, was given no such honor.
Hubbard reduced her to a wretched, broken woman, claiming she looked “tired and spent” in death. He dismissed her passing as nothing more than the fitting end to a worthless life (Martino-Trutor, 2015, p. 50). In a single stroke, her story was rewritten, stripped of power, her leadership erased. She was no longer the commanding warrior queen who led hundreds—she became a forgotten footnote in history.
Thus, the cycle of suppressing Indigenous women began. And it did not stop at their leadership, but rather intensified overtime and targeted their identities. The degradation extended to Indigenous mothers. They were no longer seen as life-givers, caretakers, or the backbone of their communities. Instead, a grotesque misconception emerged—Native women were hypersexualized, viewed as wild, untamed, and available. To the colonists, their clothing, their openness, and their confidence were misconstrued as promiscuity. The perception shifted: these women were not mothers—they were temptresses.
This perverse justification laid the groundwork for violence. Native women, their daughters, and even young girls were hunted under the guise of desire, their bodies seen as spoils of conquest. The earliest encounters between European men and Native women were often not seduction, but subjugation.
A study by the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition revealed harrowing statistics about 105 Native American female prostitutes:
92% had been raped.
84% had been physically assaulted.
72% had suffered traumatic brain injuries.
Yet, despite these staggering numbers, the U.S. government refuses to recognize prostitution and sex trafficking as acts of sexual violence against Native women. Official statistics on violence against Indigenous women do not include them. They do not count.
And when these women were asked why they turned to selling their bodies to survive, their answer was painfully simple:
They had nothing else.
Stripped of leadership. Stripped of motherhood. Stripped of bodily autonomy. Forced into the margins of survival. And yet, the system that pushed them there now refuses to acknowledge their suffering.
The numbers continue to climb.
A report to the Minnesota Legislature revealed that although American Indian women and girls made up only 1% of the state’s population between 2010 and 2018, they accounted for 8% of all murdered women and girls (Gordon, 2020). Yet, no meaningful action has followed.
Another study presented to the Legislature documented that between 2012 and 2020, anywhere from 27 to 54 American Indian girls were missing in any given month (Gordon, 2020).
Where are they?
Why isn’t this an emergency?
And why, nearly a century after the surge of domestic violence against Native women in the 1930s, is history still repeating itself?
The answer is painfully clear: Colonization and historical trauma are inextricably linked to the sexual objectification and systemic violence against Indigenous women and girls. For over 400 years, Native women have paid with their lives, And still, the cycle remains unbroken.
Restoring the Strength of Indigenous Women
Native women deserve peace—a peace free from the weight of both racial and gendered oppression that continues to press down on them today. Once, they stood proud, powerful, and revered—leaders, mothers, warriors. They were cherished like the eagle perched on the highest peak, guardians of life itself. That was the truth.
But the narrative was twisted by colonization, which rewrote their strength as fragility, their leadership as defiance, and their very existence as expendable. This distortion of their identity must be corrected. We must restore what was stolen from them and remember who these women were—and who they still are. Their story has been silenced, their legacy distorted. But it is time to give them the voice they have long been denied.
The story of Weetamoo is just one example of the strength of Indigenous women. It stands as a reminder that they did not end up in their current plight alone, and that their struggles have deep roots in history. This is their silent story, and it is time for us to listen. It is time to shift the narrative—from one of colonial suppression to one that honors the resilience and vitality of thriving Native women.
The violence inflicted upon Indigenous women is not a tragedy confined to the past—it is an ongoing crisis. What began as systemic oppression under colonization has evolved into modern policies, legal loopholes, and a society that continues to turn a blind eye. The numbers are staggering, and yet the response remains inadequate. The stories are there, but they are too often ignored.
The question is no longer how this happened. The evidence is undeniable—centuries of dehumanization, systemic violence, and historical erasure have forced Indigenous women into an ongoing cycle of suffering. The real question now is: What will we do about it?
Addressing this crisis demands more than passive acknowledgment. It requires direct action. First, we must advocate for policy reforms that protect Indigenous women from violence and ensure their cases are investigated with the urgency they deserve. We must close legal gaps that allow perpetrators to escape justice. Legislation like the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and initiatives focused on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) require sustained support, funding, and enforcement to be effective.
Second, we must challenge the harmful narratives that have long devalued Indigenous women. Education is a powerful tool in dismantling these stereotypes. By learning and sharing the true history of Indigenous communities, we can prevent the continued erasure of their stories. Media representation, curriculum changes, and accurate historical accounts must reflect the reality of what Native women have endured—and continue to endure—so that their strength is recognized, not diminished. (
Third, support for Indigenous-led organizations is critical. Grassroots movements and advocacy groups, which provide legal assistance, victim support, and community-driven solutions, are essential in empowering Indigenous women and breaking the cycle of violence. Their work is vital in shifting the power dynamic and bringing justice to those who have long been marginalized.
Indigenous women were once revered as leaders, protectors, and life-givers, yet today they are disproportionately targeted, their suffering often minimized. If we continue to ignore their stories, their pain will persist in silence. But if we choose to listen, to learn, and to act, we can help shift the narrative—from one of erasure to one of empowerment.
The past cannot be undone. But the future? That is still being written. It is up to us to ensure that Indigenous women are not only remembered—but protected, valued, and finally given the justice they have long been denied.