Red Ribbon Week: An Insensitive Erasure of Indigenous Crises

Sofia Monge

Do you recognize this poster, students and staff of EHS? It was put up just outside the counselors’ office in our school as a part of Red Ribbon Week. That week took place the very last week of October, when students watched videos and talked about natural highs in advisory, participated in dress-up days to win Blue Hawk Cup points, and entered raffles to win prizes. All of this was for the mission of raising awareness about the impact of drugs and alcohol and encouraging students to make healthy decisions in order to avoid substance abuse. The poster itself was meant to show students and staff of EHS putting their “red high-five hands together” to create the red ribbon that symbolizes awareness on the issue of drug abuse. However, the red hands that are used in this poster are something that, for a large number of people, hold a very different meaning and represent something much deeper.

The week of drug and alcohol awareness that our school participated in this year was a part of a country-wide campaign called Red Ribbon Week that was started by the nonprofit organization National Family Partnership. Their goal is, as I’ve said above, to raise awareness about the issue of drug-abuse and its negative impacts. It is aimed at school-aged children, educating them on this issue of drugs and encouraging them to live healthy and drug-free lives. The campaign itself is very well supported, being sponsored by many reputable organizations like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and America’s Poison Centers, and even has quite an admirable and inspiring start. It began in 1985 as a response to the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was kidnapped by drug traffickers and tortured to death in Mexico. Many of Camarena’s friends and family wore red badges in honor of him and his fight against illegal drugs, and various coalitions that had begun in an effort to stop the destruction that drug abuse causes adopted Camarena’s red satin ribbon as their own.

Now for this poster, the color red makes sense as Camarena’s ribbon is red. The handprints, however, don’t seem to have any relation with the Red Ribbon Week mission. On their own, the color and the handprints don’t have many preexisting correlations, but put them together and they become a symbol that already has a history and a deeper meaning. Red handprints have been used to symbolize and raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in the United States and Canada, protesting the overlooked and unaddressed issue of the alarming number of abductions and murders targeting indigenous women. And these murders have often been proven to be connected to domestic and dating violence, as well as sexual assault, trafficking, and all kinds of other crimes that seriously impact indigenous communities. The rates at which native women are victims of these kinds of crimes, especially murder, is incredibly high considering the average rates of other groups in the U.S.

These are very serious issues that have been ongoing for years, and yet they continue to be disregarded by the US government and the majority of the population. The way these Native women and girls have, and continue to be, forgotten is an erasure of indigenous people and the struggles they face. This is why raising awareness for such a cause is so important, and the symbols that the MMIW has adopted are an important part of activists’ efforts to raise awareness and encourage a change. Red handprints are one of these symbols, and to take it and repurpose it when the MMIW crisis is still an issue seems both insensitive and disrespectful. Drug-abuse awareness is very important, but so are the issues MMIW fight against, and Red Ribbon Week already has their own symbol. There was no need to use the symbol of another awareness campaign, even if it was unintentional, and everyone in EHS should be educated about both of these issues and the importance of being empathetic.

Works Cited

“Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR) | NIWRC.” National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, https://www.niwrc.org/mmiwr-awareness. Accessed 4 November 2025.

“Red Ribbon Campaign.” Red Ribbon Campaign | Largest drug-use prevention campaign in the U.S., https://www.redribbon.org/. Accessed 4 November 2025.

“Statement on the Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – International Federation of Social Workers.” Www.ifsw.org, 4 May 2023, www.ifsw.org/statement-on-the-crisis-of-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/.

“Why We Wear Red.” American Indian Policy Institute, 5 May 2020, aipi.asu.edu/blog/2020/05/why-we-wear-red.