WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced last week that a new unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services has been created to provide leadership investigating the murders and disappearances of Native Americans.
The new unit is called the Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) and will “provide leadership and direction for cross-departmental and interagency work involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives” according to the press release.
The MMU will aid state, federal, and tribal law enforcement agencies to better track and investigate murder and disappearances in Indian Country. According to the Department of the Interior, about 1,500 American Indian and Alaska Native missing persons have been entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) throughout the U.S., and approximately 2,700 cases of murder and nonnegligent homicide offenses have been reported to the Federal Government’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
Seal of the United States Department of the Interior [Public domain]
The United States Department of Justice has previously released numbers noting that Native women are murdered at almost 10 times the national average.
The report further noted that almost half of all Native American women, a staggering 46% have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. And that “one in three Indian women – at some point in her life – will experience the violence and trauma of rape.”
The Sovereign Bodies Institute released a report titled “’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’ which means “I will see you again in a good way.” The project exposes the scope of the problem and the lack of justice experienced by the families and survivors.
The report “documented 4,293 MMIWG2 [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People] cases across the US and Canada, of which 2,306 are documented in the United States. Of these 2,306 cases, over half (58%) are homicide cases, 713 of victims are girls ages 18 and under, and the average victim age is 27 years old. Of the victims identified as mothers, 87% were homicide victims. Nearly three quarters (70%) of all cases in which the victim was a girl living within the foster care system at time of death or disappearance are girls who also were experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or trafficking.”
The new MMU hopes to address the concerns and the violence and expanding the work of the previous administration.
The MMU actually builds on a Trump initiative created on November 26, 2019, with Executive Order 13898. The executive order cited the “ongoing and serious concerns of tribal governments regarding missing and murdered members of American Indian and Alaska Native communities, particularly women and girls.”
The executive order established the Operation Lady Justice Task Force led by a designee of the U.S. Attorney General to consult with tribal governments regarding missing and murdered Native Americans and Native Alaskans. The task force was to establish procedures and protocols to address cold case files of murdered and missing Native persons.
The task force was also to provide law enforcement agency coordination and raise public awareness of the crisis.
U.S Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland [Public Domain]
Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Katuk Sweeney established the first of the task force offices in July, 2020 in Minnesota.
Assistant Secretary Sweeney said at the opening that the “first Missing and Murdered Native Americans Cold Case office demonstrates the commitment of the Operation Lady Justice Task Force to achieving the mandate set out for it under President Trump’s executive order.”
She added, “Cold cases in Indian Country will be addressed with determination and the understanding that the victims in these cases will be accorded some measure of dignity and compassion – not only for them, but for their survivors, as well.”
Native women led a response confronting the task force during listening sessions. Indianz.com reported that Kristin Welch, a community organizer for Menikanaehkem, a Native women-led initiative in Wisconsin confronted the task force noting that infrastructure projects – like pipelines that create “man camps” and bring non-Natives to tribal lands who “remain out of reach of tribal authority due to gaps in law and policy at the local, state and national levels.”
In December 2020, Operation Lady Justice Task Force released a status report that it had “held more than 15 in-person and remote meetings with tribes, individuals and stakeholder groups, and established and convened 10 working groups to address specific mandates of the executive order, including developing protocols, solving cold cases and expanding outreach and awareness.”
But there were still significant gaps in coordinating law enforcement activity and support services. Secretary Haaland, a New Mexico congresswoman and the U.S.’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary, made this issue and the creation of the MMU a priority during her confirmation hearings.
“Violence against Indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades. Far too often, murders and missing persons cases in Indian country go unsolved and unaddressed, leaving families and communities devastated,” said Secretary Haaland in last week’s press release.
“The new MMU unit will provide the resources and leadership to prioritize these cases and coordinate resources to hold people accountable, keep our communities safe, and provide closure for families.”
“Whether it’s a missing family member or a homicide investigation, these efforts will be all hands-on deck,” Secretary Haaland noted.
“We are fully committed to assisting Tribal communities with these investigations, and the MMU will leverage every resource available to be a force-multiplier in preventing these cases from becoming cold case investigations.”
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