(By Roberto Young and Joshua Babcock)
As the English-language riddle goes: what disappears as you say its name? Silence. In many ways, voices and silences are two sides of the same coin. In other words, silences are not merely the absence of voices. Instead, as the anthropologist and historian Michel-Rolph Trouilot has written, silences are active, meaningful, and productive sites that indicate where we expect but do not hear a particular voice.
This can lead to a seemingly paradoxical situation: not all absences are silences, and not all silences involve an absence. For instance, we don’t generally expect that non-citizens living outside a country be able to vote in a different country’s elections or have a say in state-level policies. The fact that people living in Singapore or Guatemala don’t vote in U.S. elections is an absence, in other words, but not necessarily a silence. In the opposite case, instances of voter suppression (say, in the U.S.) are often highly visible and talked about extensively by both the people being silenced and the people doing the silencing. The act of silencing through political disenfranchisement is made apparent through the presence rather than the absence of voices—here, electorally silenced voices talking about their silencing.
People might also claim they’ve been silenced when in fact their voices continue to dominate. When high-profile individuals talk about getting “canceled” and “cancel culture,” that can actually give them a larger platform or fame, and moral panic over being canceled has been used by the American political right to harm the less powerful and dodge accountability. Or, right-wing efforts to ban books for fear of youth indoctrination (often due to the texts’ critical perspectives on systemic racism or LGBTQ+ affirming stances) can sometimes lead to greater interest in them.
When we talk about “silences” or “silencing” in political contexts, then, we are often talking about voices that are not recognized or represented, or that are excluded from being heard in the ways they could or should be. After all, many political movements and ideologies seek to silencing voices deemed to be inferior, undesirable, dangerous, or unimportant. Yet as should be clear, silences are complex and situationally particular. The questions of what counts as a silence, of what voices we expect to find but do not, thus require careful attention to context, history, and the broader social and cultural dynamics that make a silence apparent in the first place—or not.
Silencing the Voices of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
Content advisory: mentions of gender-based violence, racism, and state violence
It has been 37 years since Rae Elaine Tourtillott was last seen. Tourtillot, a Menominee tribal member living in northeast Wisconsin, was 18 years old when she went missing in the Fall of 1986. While her remains were found the following spring, there are still no suspects and the case remains unsolved to this day.
The lack of justice for Tourtillot is part of a deadly pattern and systemic problem. Violence against Indigenous women is often underreported and unaddressed. In 2016, the National Crime Information Center found that there were approximately 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. However, only 116 cases were logged into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. In some areas of the U.S., Indigenous women are murdered at rates more than ten times the national average. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health found that Indigenous women are three times more likely to be murdered than white women.
A growing movement has mobilized around #MMIWG, an acronym for “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” In preparation for National Day of Awareness for MMIWG, which took place on May 5, activists took to social media to elevate the voices of marginalized Indigenous communities. The following day, however, Instagram posts with the #MMIWG were found to be removed from the platform. While Instagram later apologized and blamed the issue on a “technical bug,” this act of taking down content by Indigenous creators was seen as a colonial continuation of erasing Indigenous voices.
Indigenous activist Guarina Paloma Lopez noted that this is not the first time Instagram has taken down Indigenous content on the platform saying, “We are silenced when we’re dead, silenced when we’re missing, silenced when we’re alive. Why is social media silencing this movement?” A red handprint over the mouth has become a symbol of the MMIWG movement, representing the systemic and systematic silencing of Indigenous voices.
In 2023, Rae Elaine Tourtillot would have turned 56 years old. The injustice of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls must end.
Silencing Freedom of Expression in the Global Press
Content advisory: mentions of physical violence, death, and psychological violence
May 3 is designated as World Press Freedom Day to recognize the freedom of expression as fundamental to defending all human rights. The role of independent media is vital to ensuring a diverse representation of voices.
Press freedom around the world continues to be under attack. In 2021, imprisonment of journalists reached a record high. In 2022, killings of journalists increased by 50%, with the majority of the global increase due to killings taking place in non-conflict countries. The global rate of impunity in cases where a journalist is killed is also extremely high, as nine times out of 10 the case is unresolved. The killings of journalists and threats against them silence their voices and those of the individuals and communities in their stories.
With approximately half of total global advertising spending being consumed by two companies (Google and Meta), local media outlets around the world have seen their advertising revenue cut in half in the past five years. This has caused many local outlets to go out of business, leaving communities in “news deserts,” without any sources of local journalism and opportunities to express local voices.
The decline of local media has led to the formation of media monopolies, where fewer and fewer corporations own more and more media outlets. These privately owned corporations are more likely to report stories and provide commentary that serve the economic and political interests of those in power. Less independent media can silence efforts to hold the powerful accountable and to engage in constructive dialogue outside echo chambers.
Further Resources
Advanced + technical texts
Michel-Rolph Trouillot. 1995. Silencing The Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press.
Susan Gal and Judith T. Irvine. 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. Cambridge University Press.
Free + content-accessible resources
Sydney Lenoch. 2022. “The Wolf That Cried Cancel Culture.” Santa Clara University.
Alaska Daily. 2022. Resources: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. ABC News.
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