As more Indigenous women go missing or murdered, the first Native American Secretary of the Interior has created a new unit to pursue justice.
Sec. Deb Haaland announced the formation of the Department of Missing and Murdered Persons in the Bureau of Justice of the Indian Affairs Bureau “to lead and direct the interdepartmental and interagency work in these cases,” a press release said Thursday.
Tamra Borchardt-Slayton, Chair of the Paiute Tribe of Utah and a member of the Utah Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Utah, celebrated the formation of unity.
“I think it’s historic for us because we’ve been a suppressed voice for a long time,” said Borchardt-Slayton. “It’s an epidemic that is still going on … it’s an amazing thing, especially when they are able to do what their goals are.”
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The former federal task force, Operation Lady Justice, founded in 2019, laid the foundation for this new unit, she said.
Now the unit includes more leadership, policy development, more funding, working with other federal agencies, collecting and analyzing data, and coordinating services with families of victims.
“Violence against indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades. Far too often, murders and missing persons cases in the Indian country remain unsolved and unaddressed, devastating families and communities. “Sec. Haaland said in a press release.
The unit plans to work with the Department of Justice’s National System for Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUs), the FBI’s behavioral analysis units and forensic laboratory, as well as the U.S. Marshals’ Missing Child Division and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said.
“Whether it’s a missing family member or a homicide investigation, these efforts will all be hands on deck,” said Sec. Said Haaland.
Utah had the eighth highest rate of missing and murdered indigenous women in the country, according to a 2018 study by the Urban Indian Health Institute.
“Native Americans make up 1.5% of the state population, but the Native American homicide rate is 4.15 times that of Caucasians,” Borchardt-Slayton said in her statement for the Utah Task Force last year.
The Utah Task Force consists of Utah Rep. Angela Romero and Senator David Hinkins, Paiute Chair Tamra Borchardt-Slayton, Director of Indian Affairs Dustin Jansen, and various legal and advocacy organizations.
Since the task force was reinstated last month and has not yet met, they haven’t spoken about how the federal unit and state task force will work together, Borchardt-Slayton said.
The study, which she cited from the Murder Accountability Project, showed that less than 30% of Native American murders in Uintah County were reported to federal agencies to keep them away from official hate crime and murder statistics and from intensive investigation.
The lack of accurate reporting leads to injustice and heartbreak.
“It exacerbates the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women, girls and two-ghost women. It results in one in ten indigenous women being murdered. Thousands go missing every year. It makes thousands of indigenous families feel . ” rejected by the judiciary, “said Borchardt-Slayton in her statement.
K. Sophie Will is the National Parks Reporter for The Spectrum & Daily News on The GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. Follow her on Twitter at @ksophiewill or email her at [email protected]. Donate here to report for America.
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