KESHENA, Wis. (AP) - When 12-year-old Ayanna O’Kimosh steps into the ring, she feeds off the energy of the crowd chanting her name.
“My favorite thing about boxing is probably the support I get from the community,” she said. “It keeps me going.”
The national boxing champion out of the Menominee Indian Boxing Club in Keshena has more on her mind than fame and glory.
Ayanna is determined to never become a victim of the phenomenon of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, or MMIWG, and she’s made it her mission to help other girls empower themselves in the same way, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.
“I use boxing as my platform to bring awareness about MMIWG through social media and fundraising,” Ayanna said.
Experts say Indigenous, or Native American, women and girls are more likely to be murdered or reported missing than those of other ethnic backgrounds. While the exact causes are unclear, some experts believe young Indigenous women are more prone to being victims of human trafficking.
Ayanna has a personal reason for making the fight against the issue her cause.
Her mother is a cousin of the mother of Katelyn Kelley, 22, who was reported missing from the Menominee reservation in June.
Ayanna, like Kelley, is a Menominee descendant. She recently received her Menominee name, Naenawehtawukiw, meaning “warrior woman.” She’s also an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation.
Her Facebook fan page, “Team Ayanna - Ayanna O’Kimosh,” has more than 800 followers and she and her parents use it to post notices about missing Indigenous women and girls, including Kelley, as well as updates on her training progress and successes as a boxer.
Ayanna’s success in her young career already includes a Silver Gloves National Championship, two state Silver Gloves Championships, two regional Silver Gloves Championships and a Junior Olympic Regional Championship.
She plans to use her skills in the ring when the coronavirus pandemic is over to teach self-defense to girls on the reservation should they ever need to fend off attackers.
But Ayanna is teaching girls more than just physical toughness.
She also is showing through her example how to be stronger mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
“She’s really helping young girls to find the strength within themselves,” said Kristin Welch, a community organizer with the Indigenous nonprofit Menīkānaehkem-Menominee Community Rebuilders, who also is a lead organizer for a women’s leadership group focused on female Indigenous victims.
Ayanna is doing more for social justice at a young age than most adults have, she said.
Welch is working to support a task force recently created by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul that will research the causes and solutions to the phenomenon.
The state has no formal record of the number of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Wisconsin, and that’s one item the task force aims to address. Research from the National Center for Biotechnology Information shows that Indigenous women in the U.S. are three times more likely to be murdered than white women.
Welch believes Ayanna can help in the fight against the issue.
“For such a young girl, she has a lot to say,” Welch said. “And adults in the task force should look at what young people are saying because they’re very solution-focused. They see a problem and immediately want to address it.”
‘She has that drive that inspires other kids’
Ayanna’s interest in boxing started at age 10 after she was inspired by her grandfather, Forrest O’Kimosh, who competed in the Golden Gloves.
Her parents were hesitant at first in allowing their daughter to pursue her ambition.
Every day on the way to school, she and her dad, Jerrit O’Kimosh, would pass by the boxing club and she would always ask to go inside.
He finally relented one day, but her mother, Michelle Bailey, wasn’t too thrilled.
“What mother wants to see their child’s face pounded?” she said. “Then, I realized I can’t keep her from trying. She’s excelled in what she wanted to do in her first two years.”
The Menominee Indian Boxing Club started in 2013 and trains boxers starting from age 8.
Gerald Wayka Jr., who runs the gym, said Ayanna is one of his most successful boxers.
“She has that drive that inspires other kids in the gym to work harder,” he said. “And others inspire her, too.”
Wayka said more girls have come to the gym after watching Ayanna’s success, but few have endured the rigorous regimen required to develop into competitive boxers and many have left the program.
Still, he said boxing has had a positive effect on the children even for those who try it only briefly.
Wayka said many are quiet when they first arrive at the club. Boxing teaches them to be more confident in themselves and to come out of their shell, he said.
The gym has been closed since the pandemic started. Menominee officials enacted stringent health guidelines on the reservation to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
Ayanna has been eager to get back in the ring and has been training for several hours a week in her basement.
It’s looking more like she won’t see an opponent until next year as her trainers believe a scheduled Dec. 19 tournament in Tennessee, which draws hundreds of young boxers from around the country, will likely be canceled or drastically scaled back.
Beyond getting back to U.S. tournaments, Ayanna hopes to one day compete in the Olympics.
“I’m going to keep working hard every day,” she said, “because this pandemic is not going to stop me from reaching my dreams.”
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