Indigenous Group Speaks Out for Missing and Murdered Women

Written by Savannah Beauprez

The issue that I’m addressing is that many indigenous women who have either gone missing or murdered have been overlooked by police departments. In 2018 a report done by the Urban Indian Health Institute found that in 2016 only, that more than 5,700 Native Americans or Alaskan Native women and girls were reported missing or murdered (Potter, 2019). Only 116 of these cases were logged into the justice department’s missing persons database, and the majority of the murders remained unsolved (Potter, 2019). Police are not likely to respond to these reports because they are an indigenous group. In a report released in 2018 it was shown that nearly 60 percent of police departments either did not respond to the incident (Domonoske, 2018).

Not only are these women overlooked by the police department, but they are also overlooked in many different media outlets. This is because media is not likely to report about these people because it does not affect the majority of their viewers. In a research done by Abigail Echo-Hawk it was demonstrated that of the 506 cases they found, the majority were never covered by any news outlet (Domonoske, 2018). Because the media fails to talk about these women many of their families feel like they have disappeared, “not once but three times: in life, in the media, and in the data (Domonoske, 2018).

This is not a necessarily new problem. In fact, this has been going on for generations, but the government has never paid attention to the problem until now. It has been shown that this problem goes back as far as 1980 and 1992 (Brown, 2018), if not further. Some of the Native American women’s remains have been believed to be the cause of a serial killer, who operated for many years because nobody paid attention to them (Brown, 2018).

Finally, the U.S. government is starting to look into these casess Once such improvement is the federal bill known as Savanna’s Act (Brown, 2018). The Savanna Act is an act that seek to ramp up data collection around missing Indigenous persons and improve protocols for investigations of crimes on reservation land (Brown, 2018). The government is even adding additional federal legislation that would provide grants for victims services in tribal communities, collect better data on American Indian human trafficking victims, and improve access to the AMBER alert system in the Native American Indian country (Brown, 2018).

The government has also created a legislation to create a task force on missing and murdered Indigenous women was introduced on March 1 (Brown, 2018). This task force is tasked with many responsibilities. These responsibilities include the ability to  uncover the “underlying historical, social, economic, institutional, and cultural factors” behind the violence and provide recommendations on how to better track missing Indigenous women, prevent violence against them, and support healing from trauma (Brown, 2018).

Along with the government is the women trying to spread awareness of this problem. One of their main advertisement for this problem is a calendar made by them. It’s called, “The 2019 Women Are Sacred calendar (NIWRC, 2018). This calendar includes awareness months and days reflecting the safety for Native women movement (NIWRC, 2018). It also includes awareness months and days. These awareness months and days include introductions, definitions and resources on Human Trafficking Awareness Month, National stalking Awareness Month, Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Child Abuse Prevention Month, National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, Domestic Violence Awareness Month and International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (NIWRC, 2018).

This problem impacts their cultural majorly. Because until the government was aware of this problem, they were faced with the knowledge that their loved ones were gone, and nobody knew were they were or what happened to them. These families were faced with the ideal that their loved ones were unable to move on because they never had a proper burial or were stuck between the spirit worlds. Many reservations have lost their faith in the governments ability to protect them and have decided to take action within their reservation. This includes more funding for tribal police forces and increased public awareness of the issue (Potter, 2019).

Many of the people in the reservation will help families try to bring awareness to their missing people. Especially a woman called Roxanne White, she has helped Native Americans file a missing person report with local police, each out to reporters, make flyers and posters and share information through her Facebook group, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives No Borders, she also organized vigils and prayer walks (Bauer, 2019). Not only does she do this, but she also has traveled to help in physical searches, always a heart-wrenching experience (Bauer, 2019).

References

Bauer, K. J. (2019, March 13). Fighting for missing and murdered indigenous people. Retrieved from inland 360: https://inland360.com/top-headlines/2019/03/fighting-for-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-people/

Brown, A. (2018, May 31). Indigenous Women Have Been Disappearing for Generations. Politicians Are Finally Starting to Notice. Retrieved from The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2018/05/31/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/

Domonoske, C. (2018, November 15). Police In Many U.S. Cities Fail To Track Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women. Retrieved from npr: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/667335392/police-in-many-u-s-cities-fail-to-track-murdered-missing-indigenous-women

NIWRC. (2018, December 10). Women Are Sacred 2019 Monthly Calendar with Awareness Months & Days . Retrieved from National Indigenous Women's Resource Center: http://www.niwrc.org/resources/women-are-sacred-2019-monthly-calendar-awareness-months-days

Potter, S. (2019, Feburary 14). Indigenous Group Speaks Out for Missing and Murdered Women. Retrieved from Public News Service: https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2019-02-14/womens-issues/indigenous-group-speaks-out-for-missing-and-murdered-women/a65530-1