Task Force holding missing indigenous persons Zoom meeting Thursday

The Montana Department of Justice and the Harlem Public Library will be holding a community listening session Thursday, July 16, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. over Zoom with the Missing Indigenous Person Task Force.

The stated purpose of this event is to have people affected by missing person cases in tribal communities talk about their specific problems and what’s going on near them.

“As an expert in your community, we would like to learn from you about how missing persons impact Indian Country,” a press release said.

The task force was formed to address the disproportionate rates at which Native Americans go missing.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said these kinds of event are an important step in the process of addressing the issue.

“Events like this listening session are critical to making sure Native American voices are heard — and that we continue fighting to end the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” Tester said in an email this morning. “It’s those very voices that first sounded the alarm on this public safety crisis and helped us craft legislation in Washington D.C. to address it, and I look forward to continuing our work to keep the federal government accountable to Indian Country.”

According to the U.S. Department of Justice Native Americans account for more than 25 percent of the missing person cases in the state of Montana despite being less then 7 percent of the population.

This phenomenon has been attributed to a number of factors that make cases of missing people in tribal communities difficult for law enforcement to address and provide reliable data on.

Part of this is due to jurisdictional conflicts between tribal, local, state and federal law enforcement which often creates confusion and hesitation when tribal law enforcement that seeks to address missing person cases.

“These jurisdictional issues may sometimes lead to slow responses or no response at all by law enforcement,” said a report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2008, “Studies have found that officers may hesitate because they believe the crime should be addressed by a different agency which sometimes results in cases ‘falling through the cracks.’”

The report said these jurisdictional issues further compounded issues already present in many tribal and rural police forces including inadequate training, a lack of specialized officers to deal with crimes like rape and domestic violence, high turnover and low morale among officers, geographic and natural barriers, as well as social, cultural and economic conditions and underreporting of victimization.

The report said much of this is the consequence of a lack of funding which makes the issue difficult to deal with and creates significant stress for tribal police officers.

“Limited resources affect salaries and how many officers can be hired,” the report says, “Inadequate funding also contributes to poor training, absence of specialized training, inability to collect and share data, and overall dissatisfaction.”

The inability to collect and share data is a problem that is being worked on by organizations like the Montana Missing Indigenous Person Task Force, which recently reported that there hasn’t been any rise in missing person cases amid the COVID-19 pandemic, although the pandemic has hampered their ability to hold public meetings to some degree.

While this issue is not exclusive to women, researchers argue that it is inextricably linked to the prevalence of sexual violence committed against people in this demographic.

According to a report by Andre B. Rosay for the National Institute of Justice, a research, development and evaluation agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, 56.1 percent of American Indian and Native Alaskan women have experienced sexual violence and nearly as many have experienced physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner.

These issues are further exacerbated by the limitations of tribal governments to address crimes committed by non-natives.

In 1978, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe that tribal courts do not hold any jurisdictional power over non-American Indians.

Violent felonies can be prosecuted by the federal government through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but due to the afore-mentioned jurisdictional confusion this can become extremely difficult.

Executive Director of Sacred Spirits First National Coalition Lisa Brunner said the federal government has created a loophole that effectively allows non-native men to abuse native women with relative impunity.

“What’s happened through U.S. federal law and policy is they created lands of impunity where this is like a playground for serial rapists, batterers, killers, whoever and our children aren’t protected at all,” Brunner said in an article by Dominic Waghorn with Sky News.

The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019, which passed the U.S. House, would expand the authority of tribal courts and would allowing them to prosecute non-Native men who commit violence against their native spouses, but the bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate.

The issue has been gaining more attention in recent years with the U.S. having recently made May 5 a National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls, and the creation of organizations like the Montana Missing Indigenous Person Task Force, as well as legislation like the Savanna’s Act, named after Fargo, North Dakota resident Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind who was murdered in August of 2017, which is supported by Tester, Daines Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont.

“We must continue to address the tragic Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis that is plaguing our tribal communities right here in Montana every day,” Daines said in an email this morning. “I will continue fighting to combat this issue and work to end this crisis that continues to cause so much suffering in Montana communities.”

Community listening events like the one being held July 16 are a part of the ongoing effort to solve this problem, by hearing the specific concerns of tribal members.

People can attend via Zoom at https://mt-gov.zoom.us/j/97515265465?pwd=b3Zoc31LbEZOVT11ZnpCYjA0VIVCZz09, meeting ID 975 1526 5465, password 652997, by phone at 646-558-8656 or 406-444-9999, meeting ID 975 1526 5465, password 652997, or by Skype for Business at https://mt-gov.zoom.us/skype/97515265465 .