WASHINGTON – Native American tribal leaders urged lawmakers to increase federal funding and implement national reporting systems to help solve the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women on Wednesday.
At a House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, lawmakers heard testimony from tribal representatives and federal agency officials, expressing bipartisan support for allocating funds toward solutions.
“We have to write a check, and I want to make sure they get the resources they need,” said House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.
The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) has gained attention in the U.S. through grassroots movements over the past decade. Native women face disproportionately higher rates of disappearance and murder compared to the national average, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). A National Institute of Justice report in 2016 found that more than four in five Native women face violence in their lifetime.
Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said the BIA estimates that there are approximately 4,200 MMIW cases that have gone unsolved, and less than half of violent victimization cases are even reported to the police.
Before the panelists gave their testimonies, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, pointed out an empty witness chair at the end of the table.
“That’s to represent the missing and murdered Indigenous women across this country,” Simpson said. “They’re listening.”
Five female Native tribal leaders told the committee their personal stories of violence, rape and murder. They described the barriers to getting justice under a legal system that creates a loophole for perpetrators of violent crimes against Native people.
The MMIW crisis is exacerbated by legal jurisdiction issues, said Margo Hill-Ferguson, professor of urban and regional planning and director of American Indian Studies at Eastern Washington University.
Under federal law, tribal courts cannot prosecute bad actors who commit major crimes like murder, rape and arson on tribal land, Hill-Ferguson said. Instead, they rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate these crimes and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute.
Hill-Ferguson grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and served as the in-house attorney for the Spokane Tribe for over a decade. She experienced first-hand the legal barriers to holding perpetrators accountable.
“As the tribal attorney, I received letters of declination where the U.S. Attorney’s Office was declining to prosecute very violent crimes on the reservation,” Hill-Ferguson said.
These complex jurisdiction issues are the primary reason why so many MMIW cases go uninvestigated.
Eugenia Charles-Newton, a delegate on the Navajo Nation Council, said she remembers waking up in a shack unable to see, tied up by a man who had given her a Coke. He held her there for nearly nine days, raped her repeatedly and beat her. She was 17 years old.
But this man was never prosecuted for his crimes because Charles-Newton didn’t know the exact location of the shed, and therefore law enforcement couldn’t figure out the jurisdiction. That man walks free today, she said, and Charles-Newton represents him on the Council.
“A lot of cases don’t ever get to see justice because nobody wants to work the cases,” Charles-Newton said. “Everybody wants to say it belongs to somebody else.”
Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and member of the Pawnee Nation, reiterated Charles-Newton’s points and added that the gray areas of jurisdiction invite bad actors to commit crimes against Native people on tribal land where they’re less likely to be caught or punished.
Echo-Hawk also advocated for Native communities in urban areas. She emphasized that solutions to the MMIW crisis must apply to all Native people, on and off of reservations.
Some federal action has been taken on the MMIW crisis. Speakers cited the 1996 Violence Against Women Act, as well as the more recent Savanna’s and Not Afraid Acts, which passed in 2020.
Speakers proposed several measures to increase awareness and accountability including a national alert system specifically for missing Native people and a cross-deputization bill that would allow tribal, state and local police to work across boundaries to prosecute criminals.
Charles-Newton emphasized the need for more law enforcement in tribal nations. The Navajo Nation has a population of roughly 200,000 but only about 218 police officers, she said. The nation would need over double that number to meet the national average.
Federal agency officials also called for increased funding for the BIA and the new Missing and Murdered Unit, established in 2021 by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, explained that under federal law, the BIA can’t reallocate funds from one tribe to another. The only way to increase funding for one tribe is to lift funding overall, he said.
In terms of fixing jurisdiction issues between tribal and federal law enforcement, Hill-Ferguson said there’s been some improvement. She pointed to U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref, who has been working across jurisdictions in eastern Washington to prosecute drug dealers, she said. Waldref also added Assistant U.S. Attorney Bree Black Horse to her team in February, who is dedicated to prosecuting MMIW cases.
Whatever action the federal government decides to take, Echo-Hawk said it’s important that it’s enforced everywhere. She said the implementation of the Savanna’s and Not Afraid Acts has been sparse, especially in urban areas. She called on the committee to take action to enforce these laws.
“This cannot depend on one person,” Echo-Hawk said. “This cannot depend on one organization. It must be a systematic approach that upholds accountability.”
Hill-Ferguson emphasized that all of the progress made so far in the MMIW crisis has been because of the grassroots efforts of Native women who call for “No More Stolen Sisters.”
Like the five tribal leaders at the hearing, it’s been Native women on the front lines, fighting for their sisters, friends, daughters, nieces. Simpson closed the hearing by thanking the “brave women” who spoke and reiterating his commitment to finding solutions to the MMIW crisis with their help.
Published in conjunction with 
