With all the injustice that Indigenous females have been facing lately, you might be wondering how you can help out.
Our latest webinar was hosted by Kylie “Brave Woman'' Hunts-In-Winter. She is an 18-year-old entrepreneur, Indigenous activist, and Martial Arts Expert. She and her family are a part of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is also part of the Harvard Class of 2025. For her webinar, Kylie talked about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls and Women movement, also called MMIW for short, and how you can help out.
First, let’s hear a little bit about our webinar host!
Growing up, Kylie has been very connected with her family’s traditions and cultures. Kylie describes her childhood self as being obsessed with martial arts and dojo. She has been training in martial arts for 15 years now and has competed in over 200 tournaments!
Even at a young age, it was clear that Kylie was amazing at what she loved. At 12, she was already learning to become a martial arts instructor, working with both kids and adults. Naturally, it didn’t take long for a non-profit organization to contact Kylie about teaching free self-defense classes for Native American women. She likes to teach techniques that are safe and doable for everyone. She started by teaching high school classes, before moving onto bookshops and even a summer camp in Montana. As of now, she’s taught at dozens of different non-profits.
In her junior year of high school, Kylie took a criminal justice program. This was also around the time she joined the Indigenous People’s Initiative where they worked to make Indigenous People’s Day a holiday in Arizona. The initiative’s efforts helped convince USA President Joe Biden to declare the day as a federal holiday. This was when she realized that she was passionate about government activism and nonprofits. She applied to Harvard on a whim, and when she got in, she found a way to make her education path align with her values.
By teaching self-defense to Native American women, Kylie has found a way to combine her two greatest passions, Indigenous activism, and martial arts, into something that means a lot to her and those around her.
Kylie remembers a time she visited her Native community and had over 150 responses to a very last-minute self-defense class. 30 women came to the class after only a day's notice and Kylie describes it as being very significant, but also sad at the same time. This is because it showed the large number of women who felt the need to learn self-defense. Although this is an issue that women all around the world face, Kylie states that it is even more common amongst Native women because of high rates of poverty and crime. Due to the lack of support for Indigenous people, it can take over two weeks after a Native woman goes missing for an investigation to start. After hearing dozens of stories about Native women all over the country getting kidnapped and taken away, Kylie decided that she had to do even more to make a difference.
Kylie believes that the injustices that Native women face are an issue that has to be fought from the core and that there are a lot of things people can do to fight back. You just have to find a way that you are passionate and excited about. For Kylie, it was teaching self-defense classes to Native women.
Kylie wants viewers to know that there are many ways you can help the MMIW movement. The most important thing that she thinks people can do is to talk about it! She believes that the best way to combat this issue is for everyone to use their voice to spread knowledge and awareness to others. Kylie admits that just talking about the movement won’t solve everything. However, it’s what gets people started on creating positive changes and advocating for a better future. Similar to the BLM movement, it takes a united group of people to make serious changes.
Near the end of the webinar, Kylie talks a little about her family history. She was named Brave Women after her third great-grandmother. At just 14, her third great-grandmother became a women warrior when she fought in the Battle of Killdeer. At this battle, her father was killed and she became the head of her family. When she was an adult, the Natives were being put into the reservations. These reservations got no support from the US government and the Natives living there were often ill and starving. In order to give her family food and a safe passage to Canada, the first Brave Woman offered to marry an Irish man at the forts. She sacrificed her entire life and childhood to keep her family safe. For the rest of her life, Brave Woman was known to stand up for Native rights and do whatever it took to keep her family safe. Kylie is proud to carry on the name and let her grandmother’s story of fighting and activism live on through her.
On her Instagram account @bravewoman__, Kylie posts stories of other female martial arts figures, hoping to grow the female martial arts community and inspire others.
Want to see more of Kylie? Follow her personal Instagram at @kylie_huntsinwinter.
Want to learn more about the MMIW Movement? Check out these websites below.
Written by: Nevadha
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