House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples convenes hearing on #MMIW crisis

Wednesday, September 11, 2019  

The House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States is focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women at a hearing on Wednesday morning.

The subcommittee will take testimony from a panel federal officials. The goal is to find out how the Trump administration is addressing the #MMIW crisis.

"Our legal system is ignoring missing and murdered indigenous women," Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources said in advance of the hearing. "Lack of communication - between people, and between governments - hurts tribes and makes it harder to address #MMIW violence."

"Native women and girls should no longer be invisible," the lawmakers said.

The hearing takes place at 10am Eastern. The witness list follows:

Hovland, a citizen of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, is a political appointee of the Trump administration at the Department of Health and Human Services. Her counterpart at the Department of the Interior is Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney, who is Inupiat.

Sweeney, however, is not on the witness list for the hearing despite pledges to make #MMIW a priority. Instead, the Trump administration is sending a mid-level official from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to talk about the alarming numbers of Indigenous women who go missing and murdered in their communities and in urban areas.

Interior did not return a request for comment about Sweeney's absence at the hearing.

Reviewing the Trump Administration’s Approach to the MMIW Crisis (September 11, 2019)