Are You Aware? Who Are We, America?
This is part III in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here.
Recently, I was in the lobby of a radio station with a city law enforcement officer who is a criminal investigator (CI). The two of us were waiting to be interviewed on the radio about missing and murdered Indigenous people.
The criminal investigator spoke to me about a case that happened downtown. She said she responded to a call where police officers told her they found a deceased Native American woman inside an apartment. The lead officer told the CI that the Native woman died from suicide. Upon investigation, the CI determined that the case was actually a homicide.
Native American women face the highest rates of violence per capita of any racial demographic in the United States. Inaccurate documentation, misreporting of gender, and underreporting by victims complicates the statistical data. Currently available data suggests the need for community engagement in increasing awareness and addressing all types of violence against Indigenous women and two-spirit (Native LGBTQ).
A missing and murdered Indigenous women fact sheet from Restoring Ancestral Winds, Inc., one of 19 tribal coalitions in the U.S., notes the following:
• 84.3% of Native American women and two-spirit have experienced violence in their lifetime.
• 56.1% have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.
• 55.5% have experienced physical violence by intimate partners in their lifetime.
• 48.8% of Indigenous women will be raped in their lifetime (two times more likely than non-Hispanic white women, 17.9 percent).
• 85% of two-spirit have experienced sexual violence; 78% have experienced assault.
• Native American women are 10 times more likely to be murdered than white women.
The challenging reality is that Native women are more likely than other women to experience violence. The 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) included an historic provision reaffirming tribes’ inherent power to exercise Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction over non-Native American perpetrators who commit acts of domestic violence, dating violence, or violations of certain protection orders in Indian Country; however, this does not help address crimes that occur off of reservations.
The following statistics come from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Report (2016):
• 96% of sexual violence toward Native victims is at the hands of non-Native perpetrators; 21 percent have experienced intra-racial violence.
• Native American women are five times more likely to have experienced physical violence by an interracial intimate partner, as compared to non-Hispanic white women (90% vs. 18%).
• 89% have experienced stalking by a non-Native perpetrator.
These alarming statistics are just now capturing the attention of people in the U.S, while Indigenous populations who live north and south of the U.S., the First Nations in Canada and Mexico, have focused on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ or two-spirit (MMIWG2S) for some time. Literature and media about MMIWG2S is more prevalent among First Nations, where little to none exists in the U.S.
Recently, the MMIWG2S issue has gained the attention of national policymakers. The federal government has increased and decreased funding to tribes addressing violence — decisions that, in my experience, are problematic in a number of ways.
The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) is a Native-led nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against Native women. A major part of their funding is from the U.S. Administration on Children, Youth and Families and the Family and Youth Services Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The tribal programs within the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women fund 19 tribal coalitions across the U.S. Tribal coalitions work in regions of the U.S. providing training and technical assistance and informing policy development. These are small efforts on the federal front; however, more assistance is needed to curb these dire statistics.
Native American tribes are sovereign nations within a nation. There are over 520 tribes in the U.S., and more than 71% of Native Americans live outside their individual tribal nations. For large tribal member populations that have a formal tribal government established, tribal leaders often conduct lobbying efforts on a federal, state, and county level.
One way to address the MMIWG2S issue is through federal legislation, and the NIWRC is leading this effort. NIWRC has developed educational programs with the support of Native-led domestic violence and sexual assault tribal coalitions and tribal government leaders. Lucy Simpson, NIWRC executive director states, “We demand meaningful legislative reforms that remove barriers to safety for Indian women by recognizing and strengthening the sovereign ability of all tribal nations to protect women and their children.” She clearly understands the impact federal laws make on Indigenous communities when it comes to violence. Tribal leaders have drawn attention to the fact that normalization of violence against Native women has occurred as federal laws and policies have eroded the authority of tribal governments to protect Native women.
Federal legislation addressing missing and murdered Indigenous women includes the Tribal Reporting & Accountability to Congress Act S. 1892, Savannah’s Act S. 277/H.R. 2733, Finding and Investigating Native Disappearance Act S. 1893, Not Invisible Act S. 982/H.R. 2438, Bridging Agency Data Gaps & Ensuring Safety Act S. 1853/H.R. 4289 and GAO Studying MM Indian Crisis Act S. 336/H.R. 2029. Congress failed to pass any laws to address the MMIW crisis. Also problematic is the failure to reauthorize legislation so that tribes can fund tribal justice and services for Native women provided in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) (H.R. 1585 and S. 2843) and the Family Violence Prevention Services Act (S. 2259).
In 2019, Congress did pass a resolution recognizing May 5 as a National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls. The Senate and House hosted hearings on the MMIW topic. The current administration issued a presidential executive order establishing Operation Lady Justice, a task force to address MMIW. The National Congress of American Indians and NIWRC and others continue to inform Congress and urge it to act on MMIW legislation.
Each person holds the ability and responsibility to take action. Now is the time to join these efforts, stay informed, and act to bring justice for Native women, for they are among the original inhabitants of this land.
The Native woman (about whom the law enforcement officer spoke to me) who was initially misclassified by law enforcement as dying from suicide is, unfortunately, only one of thousands of Native women who continue to be misclassified in an unjust system that continues to minimize the crisis. As a society, we must recognize the still-existing structures of colonization and its powerful and negative effects on Indigenous peoples.
Ida Bima is from the Diné Nation. Her maternal clan is Edgewater born for the Spanish. She calls both Arizona and Utah home. She is a mother of five and grandmother to six. She has a bachelor’s degree in business management and an MBA. She worked 17 years in the mayor’s office on diversity and human rights policy. Currently, she is a director of a nonprofit, working to address violence against Native women.
Sources: Futures Without Violence: Violence Against Native American/American Indian Women Fact Sheet; Indian Law Resource Center; Sarah Deer, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America; NIJ 2016; National Congress of American Indian Policy Research Center (2018). Research Policy Update: Violence Against American Indian Women and Girls. National Congress of American Indians, February 2018; Urban Indian Health Institute: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A snapshot of data from 71 urban cities in the United States, November 2018; Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy (2013); Restoration Magazine, February 2020.
