Unmasking the Hidden Crisis of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW): Exploring Solutions to End the Cycle of Violence
Authors: Sarah Deer, Ruth Buffalo, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Tami Jerue
Publication Year: 2019
Last Updated: 2019-10-09 09:45:31
Journal: US House of Representatives Committee Repository
Keywords: Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI), National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC), jurisdictional barriers, sex traffickers, criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians, federal NamUs (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System), Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind
Short Abstract:
Testimony of Professor Sarah Deer:
...a citizen of the Muscogee(Creek) Nation and currently hold the position of Professor at the University of Kansas and serve as theChief Justice of the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals. Today I am testifying in my personal capacity.
My testimony today will focus on our knowledge in terms of the high numbers of MMIW based on open source reporting (media reports and family accounts). I will offer some theories about the causes of this high rate of MMIW. Finally, I will suggest how this committee, and Congress generally, can improve lawenforcement’s response to this crisis.
STATISTICS: WHAT WE KNOW
First, it is critical to understand that this crisis has deep roots in the historical mistreatment of Nativepeople throughout the history of the United States. Native women and girls have been disappearingsince 1492, when Europeans kidnapped Native people for shipment back to Europe. Targeted killing ofNative women is also not a recent phenomenon. This history of oppression makes it difficult to achieve buy-in from marginalized communities who have been victims of oppression at the hands of the federal government for centuries.
When crafting solutions, we have to be ready to accept that there will be no “quick fix” to this problem.This crisis has been several hundred years in the making and will require sustained, multi-year, multifaceted efforts to understand and address the problem.
Currently, there is no formal government-funded national database that carefully and deliberately tracks cases of MMIW. Fortunately, a Native-owned and -operated non-profit organization known as the Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) has been working tirelessly since 2015 to gather as much data as possible using open source reporting and input from family members of MMIW. I share this data with the permission of the Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI):
Because this database has largely been built by hand, the data likely only represents a fraction of the true numbers. The SBI database currently tracks the following types of MMIW cases:
ï‚· Missing
ï‚· Murdered (both solved and unsolved)
ï‚· Suspicious deaths
ï‚· Deaths in custody (jail/prison/hospital)
ï‚· Jane Does (unidentified human remains thought to be Native women)
Abstract:
focus on our knowledge in terms of the high numbers of MMIW based on open source reporting (media reports and family accounts). I will offer some theories about the causes of this high rate of MMIW. Finally, I will suggest how this committee, and Congress generally, can improve lawenforcement’s response to this crisis.
...Currently, there is no formal government-funded national database that carefully and deliberately tracks cases of MMIW. Fortunately, a Native-owned and -operated non-profit organization known as the Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) has been working tirelessly since 2015 to gather as much data as possible using open source reporting and input from family members of MMIW. I share this data with the permission of the Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI):
Because this database has largely been built by hand, the data likely only represents a fraction of the true numbers. The SBI database currently tracks the following types of MMIW cases:
ï‚· Missing
ï‚· Murdered (both solved and unsolved)
ï‚· Suspicious deaths
ï‚· Deaths in custody (jail/prison/hospital)
ï‚· Jane Does (unidentified human remains thought to be Native women)
While there is no single cause (no primary risk factor), that one can point to as the reason for high rates of MMIW, experts suggest several explanations for the disparity.
These explanations include:
ï‚· jurisdictional barriers
ï‚· indifference from government officials
ï‚· the lack of cross-jurisdictional communication and planning
ï‚· failure to adequately fund tribal justice systems, and
ï‚· the problem of sex traffickers and other predators targeting Native women specifically.
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