Native women participate in a shawl ceremony during a vigil for missing and murdered indigenous women at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2018. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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'Silent Crisis': The missing and murdered in Indian Country

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

By Acee Agoyo

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is holding an oversight hearing on Wednesday to address the "silent crisis" of missing and murdered people in Indian Country.

The hearing takes place at 2:30pm Eastern in Room 628 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. It will be broadcast on the committee's website.

Members of the committee will be taking testimony from federal law enforcement officials and Native women at the hearing. The witness list follows:

Panel I
· MR. GERALD LAPORTE, Director, Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences, National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC
· MR. ROBERT JOHNSON, Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigative Division, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Pittsburgh, PA
· MR. CHARLES ADDINGTON, Deputy Associate Director, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services, Washington, DC
Panel II
· THE HONORABLE AMBER CROTTY, Delegate, Navajo Nation Council, Window Rock, AZ
· MS. PATRICIA ALEXANDER, Co-Chair, VAW Taskforce, Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Juneau, AK
· MS. KIMBERLY LORING-HEAVY RUNNER, Missoula, MT

BIG NEWS: The US Senate unanimously passed my bill, #SavannasAct, that I introduced last year to help address the epidemic of missing & murdered Native American women across our country. Incredibly proud of this major step fwd. #MMIW #MMIWG pic.twitter.com/dWbNdSeJoK
— Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (@SenatorHeitkamp) December 7, 2018

The hearing comes shortly after the Senate passed S.1942, also known as Savanna's Act. The bill is named in honor of Savanna Marie Greywind, a 22-year-old woman from the Spirit Lake Nation who was brutally murdered after she went missing in North Dakota last year.

If enacted into law, the bill would require the Department of Justice, for the first time, to provide annual reports on the numbers of Native women who go missing and murdered. It also requires the government to improve access to national databases to ensure that such cases don't fall through the cracks.

"For far too long, this crisis in our Native American communities has been unnoticed, ignored, and unreported," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), the sponsor of S.1942, said after passage of the bill on December 7.

"As we remember the life of Savanna and the unimaginable pain of those eight days of friends and family searching for her, this legislation will help law enforcement agencies better collect and maintain data on those missing and help our criminal justice system take stronger action against those who traffic in exploitation, abuse, and murder," said Heitkamp, who has served on the committee during her entire tenure in the Senate.

Savanna's Act still be taken up by the House before it can be sent to President Donald Trump for his signature. Passage must occur before the end of the 115th Congress or the bill would have to be reintroduced in the next session.

“Savanna’s Act will provide Indian tribes with better access to databases that track missing and unidentified persons across the country,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), the chairman of the committee. “This will help bring greater awareness regarding tragic cases of missing and murdered Indians in the United States.”

Existing data indicates that 5,712 indigenous women and girls were reported missing as of 2016. But in a landmark report, the Urban Indian Health Institute discovered that only 116 such cases were logged into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

When it comes to murders of indigenous people, some data exists. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Native women suffer from the second-highest homicide rate. Nearly half of the victims were murdered by an intimate partner.

Urban Indigenous women & girls go missing/are murdered at extremely high rates, yet there is little data on the crisis. We started gathering the data and need your help to continue. Stand with us. #MMIWG #DecolonizeData #NotInvisible #NoMoreStolenSisters https://t.co/KpyN81CgxI pic.twitter.com/XI8ldlvnIr
— UIHI (@TheUIHI) November 14, 2018

But even that information is limited in scope. Only 18 states provided data for the report, which covered the years between 2003 and 2014. For example, Montana and South Dakota, where high-profile cases of missing and murdered Native women are frequently reported in the media, do not currently submit their data.

“We can no longer sweep these statistics under the rug,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), a co-sponsor of Savanna's Act. “This problem is more than real – it’s horrifying. And it must be answered.”

I'm proud that #SavannasAct, @SenatorHeitkamp's legislation of which I'm a proud cosponsor, recently passed the Senate. This legislation combats the epidemic of missing & murdered Native women and girls by improving the federal government’s response to addressing the crisis. pic.twitter.com/q63ZCZ56WM
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) December 10, 2018

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Notice

Oversight Hearing on “Missing and Murdered: Confronting the Silent Crisis in Indian Country.” (December 12, 2018)