Day of awareness puts focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women

On July 4, 2013, Hanna Harris of Lame Deer, Mont., went out with friends to celebrate Independence Day. But she never returned home. 

Her family reported her disappearance to local law enforcement but felt the response was insufficient, so they organized their own search party. Three days later, Harris’s body was found — she had been raped and murdered. She was 21 years old.

Harris, a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, was born May 5. Since her death, thousands across Indian Territory spend her birthday recognizing and honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG). 

Around 1,500 American Indian and Alaska Native persons have been reported missing to the National Crime Information Center, according to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Justice Services. Approximately 2,700 cases of murder and nonnegligent homicide offenses have been reported to the government’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

In total, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) estimates there are some 4,200 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous and Native people that have gone unsolved. Murder is now the third-leading cause of death among Indigenous and Native women and girls. 

“This issue has been going on for such a long time, and over the years, we’ve seen that it’s gotten totally ignored by the powers that be in our government, by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement agencies that are supposed to have jurisdiction over these cases,” said Natalie Bullion, executive director for MMIW USA.

But she acknowledges there’s been some change over the last few years. 

In 2018, Hanna’s Act was passed in Montana, authorizing the state’s justice department to help local law enforcement in all missing persons cases.

After his inauguration, President Biden declared May 5 as Missing or Murdered Indigenous Awareness Day. For the third year in a row, he recognized this day of awareness.

“Indian Country has been gripped by an epidemic of missing or murdered Indigenous people, whose cases far too often go unsolved,” Biden said in a statement Friday.

“Families have been left investigating disappearances on their own, demanding justice for their loved ones, and grieving pieces of their souls,” he continued. “Generations of activists and organizers have pushed for accountability, safety, and change. We need to respond with urgency and the resources needed to stop the violence and reverse the legacy of inequity and neglect that often drives it.”  

The history of violence against Indigenous women can be traced back to the arrival of Europeans and Christopher Columbus’s attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples and their culture through murder, the sex trade and rape.

To acknowledge the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is to reckon with a dark legacy of American history, said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

“It’s the remnant of an ugly part of colonialism,” Grijalva told The Hill. “It has been about a paternalistic attitude toward Indigenous people in this country and tribes that’s historic. And I think that that history sometimes is the impediment to moving things forward as urgently as they should.”

“The whole tragedy is, I think, symbolic of a relationship within the country that reminds many people, and some it makes them very uncomfortable, that that is part of the history,” he said.

Grijalva and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) on Friday introduced a resolution to designate May 5, 2023, as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The resolution honors the missing and murdered and draws Congressional attention to the violence against them.

“Indigenous women and girls living on reservations experience murder rates of more than 10 times the national average, and more than 4 out of 5 Indigenous women have experienced violence. These rates are unacceptable,” Newhouse said in a statement. 

“We must do more to ensure these crimes are solved and no longer under-reported or under-investigated,” Newhouse continued. “Designating May 5th as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls will help shine a light on these heartbreaking tragedies and serve as a reminder to Congress that we must continue to support our indigenous communities as we work to bring them the justice they deserve.”

But Grijavla credits the rising awareness of the crisis to the women of the community. 

In 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the creation of the Missing & Murdered Unit within the BIA’s Office of Justice Services. 

“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 Haaland, the first Native American to lead a cabinet-level agency. 

Still, the solution to the crisis doesn’t rest solely with the federal government, said Paula Julian, senior policy specialist at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. Instead, systemic barriers that lead to the missing and murdered need to be addressed. 

One of the most palpable barriers, Julian told The Hill, is failed law enforcement responses. 

“When you talk to families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, their experience of reporting their daughter or their relative going missing is, ‘Well, how old is she? Oh, she’s of age. She’s probably out partying, let’s give it a couple of days before we do anything,’” Julian said. “There’s nothing written in laws that say they can’t take a missing persons report immediately and start searching.”

There are also times when law enforcement keeps families in the dark about progress on the case, she said — including when a loved one is found, as was the case of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places. 

When Kaysera went missing Aug. 24, 2019, in Hardin, Mont., her family had no idea. When her body was found five days later, the family wasn’t told. Then, her body was cremated against the family’s wishes and religious practices. 

“There’s very little accountability,” Julian said. “When you sit and you visit with people, it’s like, none of this is a surprise. And it’s not a surprise because these are problems that they’ve been dealing with since contact.” 

Meanwhile, laws such as the Major Crimes Act of 1885 give federal authorities oversight on prosecuting Native citizens for felonies.

“I think that was one of the first major gaps in eroding local tribal governmental authority to respond,” Julian said. “These federal policies and laws, while it may have been intended well, Indigenous peoples and Indian people know that it wasn’t. The effect was really to result in all of the disparities we see.”

Those types of barriers have led to other barriers, such as a lack of preventive action. 

A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that more than 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56 percent who have experienced sexual violence. 

Overall, more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

Still, despite 574 federally recognized tribes, there are fewer than 50 Native women’s shelters in the country and less than 300 tribal domestic violence and sexual assault programs, Julian said. 

Some places are working to provide preventative resources for women. 

MMIW USA offers safety services, helping victims escape a dangerous living situation, find safe places to move or paying to have locks changed on homes. 

The organization also works to provide services for families in the midst of the crisis, from putting up fliers to helping raise funds to providing counseling services. 

For Julian, working on the ground is also an important way to build hope and remind many in the community things can still change. 

“Indigenous communities [have] resisted forever and a day,” she said. “They have organized and created safe spaces for women in their homes before there were shelters. The grassroots provides the political will to the policymakers to do the right thing. The changes that they’ve made at the federal and at the state level is not solely from the goodness of their hearts, it is because the grassroots has organized and created a groundswell that you can’t continue to ignore.”