Women are disappearing and dying in Indian country. We must act. The epidemic of missing and murder

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Women are disappearing and dying in Indian country. We must act
Debra Anne Haaland

The epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women has long been overlooked. That’s why I’m fighting for them in Congress


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Debra Haaland represents Albuquerque, New Mexico, in Congress. Photograph: Juan Labreche/AP

What would you do if your sister, your daughter or your mother went missing without explanation? There would be search parties. Law enforcement would issue amber alerts. Investigations would begin. Suspects would be brought in for questioning. In Indian country, that’s not the case. In Indian country, it is often days before law enforcement shows up for a missing person call or homicide. In the case of Ashlyn Mike, a seven-year-old-girl in New Mexico, an amber alert wasn’t issued for more than 10 hours, when typically for cases of missing children those alerts are posted almost immediately. Ashlyn Mike lost her life at the age of seven.

In Indian country, families sometimes wait days for the authorities to respond, and frequently lead the only search parties. What’s worse, sometimes the record of that missing indigenous person isn’t documented, leaving questions unanswered for decades, leading to gaps in information, missing person cases unsolved and perpetrators roaming the streets. Leona Kinsey disappeared from her home in Oregon 20 years ago – her car was found empty, purse in her home, groceries still in the fridge. She is still missing, and her family still wonders what happened to her.

What we do know is women and girls are disappearing without warning. What we do know is Native women face murder rates that are 10 times higher than the national average. What we do know is that families are left without answers. What we do know is there is a lot we do not know. Indian country has been severely underfunded for decades. It leads to a lack of funding for roads, cellphone service and public safety departments.

There are several things we can do right away to begin addressing the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women. First, we must adequately fund tribal law enforcement and victim advocates so survivors of domestic violence and trafficking do not become part of the statistics that contribute to loss of life. With the resources to hire more officers in Indian country and provide the proper training on missing person cases, law enforcement can improve response times and conduct effective investigations. The picture can be even more dire for urban Indians. Recent reports by the Urban Indian Health Institute identified 506 cases of missing and murdered indigenous women across 71 urban cities – my state of New Mexico ranked number one for the highest number of MMIW cases with 78. These numbers are believed to be an extremely low estimate due to the lack of programmatic resources across the board to address issues of missing and murdered indigenous people in urban locations.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/02/missing-murdered-indigenous-women-deb-haaland