[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2025
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine,
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania Ranking Member
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana DEREK KILMER, Washington
JAKE ELLZEY, Texas JOSH HARDER, California
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina
NOTE: Under committee rules, Mr. Cole, as chairman of the full
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Subcommittee Staff
Kristin Clarkson, Sarah Peery, Courtney Stevens, Maggie Earle, and
Scott Prutting
__________
INVESTIGATING THE CRISIS OF MISSING AND
MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-634 WASHINGTON : 2025
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
TOM COLE, Oklahoma, Chairman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut,
Chairman Emeritus Ranking Member
KAY GRANGER, Texas, STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
Chairwoman Emeritus MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho BARBARA LEE, California
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
KEN CALVERT, California C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN, CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
Tennessee MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio DEREK KILMER, Washington
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada GRACE MENG, New York
DAVID G. VALADAO, California MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington PETE AGUILAR, California
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
BEN CLINE, Virginia NORMA J. TORRES, California
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania ED CASE, Hawaii
MIKE GARCIA, California ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa JOSH HARDER, California
TONY GONZALES, Texas JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi SUSIE LEE, Nevada
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
JERRY L. CARL, Alabama
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina
Susan Ross, Chief Clerk and Staff Director
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2025
----------
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
INVESTIGATING THE CRISIS OF MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN
WITNESSES
EUGENIA CHARLES-NEWTON, LAW AND ORDER COMMITTEE CHAIR AND MEMBER OF THE
NAVAJO NATION;
ABIGAIL ECHO-HAWK, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AT SEATTLE INDIAN HEALTH
BOARD AND DIRECTOR OF THE URBAN INDIAN HEALTH INSTITUTE AND MEMBER
OF THE PAWNEE NATION;
CHERYL HORN, MEMBER OF THE MONTANA MISSING INDIGENOUS PERSONS TASK
FORCE AND MEMBER OF THE ASSINIBOINE TRIBE OF FORT BELKNAP;
MARY JANE MILES, VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE ELDREDGE: PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE (NPTEC) AND MEMBER OF THE NEZ PERCE TRIBE;
MAULIAN BRYANT, WABANAKI ALLIANCE INCOMING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND
MEMBER OF THE PENOBSCOT NATION;
BRYAN NEWLAND, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS AND CITIZEN OF
THE BAY MILLS INDIAN COMMUNITY (OJIBWE);
PATRICE KUNESH, COMMISSIONER OF THE ADMINISTRATION FOR NATIVE
AMERICANS, AT THE ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES IN THE
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES;
DARON CARREIRO, ACTING DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF TRIBAL JUSTICE (OTJ)
AT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND ENROLLED MEMBER OF THE CHICKASAW
NATION;
RICHARD ``GLEN'' MELVILLE, DEPUTY BUREAU DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF JUSTICE
SERVICES AND MEMBER OF MAKAH TRIBE OF WASHINGTON
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL E. SIMPSON, CHAIRMAN OF
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, OF COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. Simpson. The committee will come to order. Good
morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. I would like
to extend a special thanks to our Tribal witnesses who traveled
here to share their experiences on this tragic issue. I would
also like to welcome the Agency officials who will be joining
us on the second panel.
Before we begin, I would also like to thank Chairman Cole
for joining us today. As the first Native American to serve as
chair of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the
Chickasaw Nation, he continues to be one of the biggest
champions in Indian Country and for the job that we do on the
Appropriations Committee. I sincerely appreciate that Chairman
Cole took the time to be here this morning to discuss and
address the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous
women.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, more than 2 in 5 American Indians and Alaska Native
women are raped in their lifetime. Homicide is the number 3
leading cause of death for American Indians and Alaska Native
females between the ages of 10 and 24 and the number 5 leading
cause of death for 25 to 34 year olds. Forty percent of all
victims of sex trafficking are identified as American Indians
and Alaska Native women. In 2023, over 5,800 American Indians
and Alaska Native females were missing, and 74 percent were
children. This is tragic and unacceptable. I even see this in
my own home State of Idaho. The Idaho Missing Persons
Clearinghouse 2023 reports there is a total of 79 missing
Native Americans, and the average rate of missing indigenous
people is almost 19 per 100,000 people. This is nearly double
the rate for non-Native Americans in Idaho. Again, this is
completely unacceptable, and I will continue to use my role in
Congress to address this issue.
The Fiscal Year 2025 House Interior Appropriations Bill
provided a $191 million increase for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs' Public Safety and Justice programs. Included in that
is an additional $141 million for criminal investigations and
police services. We also provided an additional $13.5 million,
for a total of $30 million, for the Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women's Initiative to help address this crisis,
including resources for criminal investigators, software
platforms, and evidence recovery equipment. The bill also
expanded on the work being done to combat drug abuse and
distribution in Indian Country by creating a Narcotics
Reduction Task Force. This task force will dismantle and
disrupt opioid, heroin, and other dangerous drug distribution
networks. Language was also included to support strengthening
efforts to take down international cartels targeting Tribal
communities for human and drug trafficking. These steps are
just the beginning. Beyond the Interior bill, I vow to continue
to do all I can to support all the Federal agencies that are
working to address this crisis. This is a bipartisan issue, and
I know that my colleagues on the other side will continue to
join us in supporting this as well as they always have.
In terms of the hearing today, our first panel will consist
of a group of Tribal members and representatives who have
dedicated their work to addressing this crisis. I would like to
personally thank each one of you for your tireless work. I am
here to listen and to learn and will do what I can to support
all of your efforts. On the second panel, it will consist of
representatives from the Department of Interior, the Department
of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Justice.
Before I go on, I just want to say I am not here to point
fingers or anything else. I don't think any of us are. We are
here to solve a problem, and to solve the problem, we want to
know what is working, what is not working, things that might
need to be changed, and that is the purpose of this hearing.
This hearing will continue into the future as we try to address
some of these things. We being the Appropriations Committee, we
are responsible for funding a lot of these programs, and as I
said, we increase the funding dramatically of what we spend in
Indian Country in this bill, and we will continue to do so
because it is the right thing to do.
Anyway, I appreciate all of you being here today, and I
look forward to your testimony with a broken heart.
Mr. Simpson. Congresswoman Pingree.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHELLIE PINGREE, RANKING MEMBER OF
THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES
OF COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you,
in particular, for hosting this hearing, and thank you to
Chairman Cole for being here. Your expertise on these issues is
extremely valuable, so I really appreciate you taking the time
to be with all of us.
Good morning to our two panels. Thank you for being with us
here today to discuss your work on missing and murdered
indigenous women and to share your firsthand and often very
painful knowledge. I want to particularly thank formally
Ambassador Maulian Bryant, now soon to be Director Bryant, who
has traveled from Maine to participate in this hearing. Thank
you so much for all the work you do in Maine, in particular,
the work you have done on domestic violence. We appreciate the
insights and all the information that you will share with us
today.
As we all know, this is a complex crisis, and where there
has been growing awareness and focus on resolving unsolved
cases, understanding and addressing other contributing factors,
such as drug and human trafficking, domestic violence, poverty,
housing issues, they are all equally important to confront the
scale and severity of this issue. The Not Invisible Act and
Savanna's Act have heightened our awareness of the challenges
associated with data collection and law enforcement, as well as
the need for additional funding for staffing and public safety
and justice programs that can comprehensively address this
crisis. That is why it is imperative we pass a full-year
Interior appropriations bill and not have programs constrained
by operating under a continuing resolution.
For decades, Native-American and Alaska-Native communities
have dealt with the challenges of high rates of assault,
abduction, and murder of Tribal members. The statistics are
truly sobering: 4 in 5 American-Indian and Alaska-Native women,
85 percent, have experienced violence in their lifetime,
including over 50 percent who have experienced sexual violence.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that
indigenous females experienced the second highest rate of
homicide in 2020, and homicide was in the top 10 leading causes
of death for indigenous females aged 1 to 45. Overall, more
than 1.5 million indigenous women have experienced violence in
their lifetime. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) estimates
that there are approximately 4,200 missing and murdered cases
that have gone unsolved. While these rates are staggering,
research shows that even that less than half of violent
victimizations against women are ever even reported to the
police, and that even though approximately 71 percent of
indigenous women live in urban areas, research is missing on
the rates of murder and violence for these women.
Some steps have been taken to address the crisis, such as
establishment of Operation Lady Justice in 2019 to pursue these
unresolved cases, the creation of Missing and Murdered Unit
(MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office of Justice
Services in 2021 to provide leadership and direction for cross-
Department and interagency work, and the 2023 launch of the
Department of Justice' Missing or Murdered Indigenous Person
Regional Outreach Program, which permanently places 10
attorneys and coordinators in five designated regions across
the United States to help respond to cases, as well as the
grant funding and public service announcements from the
Administration for Native Americans. We need to do so much more
to ensure that people feel safe and secure and that they are
safe and secure in their homes and communities.
I know this is going to be an important and, as the chair
said, a heartbreaking conversation today, but it will shed more
light on the crisis. It will help us to come to a better
agreement of how to move forward and do more to solve these
problems. I can't thank you enough for coming here, telling
your personal stories, telling us about the work that you have
been doing. You have all made a tremendous difference, but,
really, it is up to us to make sure we get this across the
finish line and reduce those numbers and really change the
situation. Again, I want to thank the chair for holding this
subcommittee, and I know we will want to work together as a
subcommittee to resolve this issue. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Congresswoman Pingree.
Mr. Cole. I guess I should say Chairman Cole.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COLE, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE
ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. Cole. Just ``Tom'' will do. Before I go into my formal
remarks, I just want to reflect personally a minute here and,
number one, thank all our witnesses for coming. I know this is
a challenging topic to talk about, but it is important that we
talk about it. We appreciate that. I look forward to the next
panel as well with what our folks that are dealing with this
challenge with the resources. This was actually the first
committee room that I was ever in as a new member of the
Appropriations. It was the subcommittee I wanted to be on, and
I eventually got to this very chair, sitting next to this very
chairman who is back here for a second deal, and to my left,
three distinguished former chairmen of this committee and now
chairman again. This is an interesting committee because it is
a contentious committee on a lot of areas, but not on this
area.
You know, I couldn't say enough good things about my
friend, Betty McCollum, and my friend, former Chairwoman
Pingree, and my friend. On these things, they work together. As
a matter of fact, I think the very first request I got as the
new chairman was Ms. Pingree coming up to me and saying, Tom,
if you can give us more money, we will spend it on law
enforcement. You know, Simpson and I will work together on this
stuff.
I know how much from his first term as chairman because
Mike talked about this crisis in law enforcement all across
Indian Country, you know, very movingly and did what he could
with the limited budgets we had in that period, but this is a
priority. Well, we have got great members here. You know, Mr.
Cloud is a good friend, and he is from Texas, but he got
educated in the right State, in Oklahoma, so he knows something
about Indians.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Cole. My friend, Mr. Zinke. Nobody cares more about
Indians. He proved that both in Congress and when he was
Secretary of the Interior. Jake another Texan, they don't know
too much about, you know, Indians as a rule. One of the first
things he did as a freshman was come up to my office and say I
want to get to know more about this topic because I know it is
an important topic, and I appreciate his contribution.
Finally, I was just in North Carolina with my friend, Mr.
Edwards, to look there at storm damage, but of course, he
represents the Eastern Band, and that is a great Tribe. The
people here, whatever their partisan differences or regional
differences, are very, very focused on trying to do something
meaningful on this issue, and I will assure you I am very
focused on following their lead. The solutions will come from
here, but we have to write a check, and I want to make sure
they get the resources they need to followup on these kinds of
needs because it is something that bears Federal action that I
do not think we have had enough of, but this hearing is a very
good start.
Let me just go to my formal comments. As an enrolled member
of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and the longest-serving
Native American House of Representative, Tribal issues have
always been at the forefront of the policy decisions I have
made and advocated for as a Member of Congress and as a member
of this important committee. Native-American and Alaska-Native
women and girls continue to be disproportionately targeted by
dangerous predators. The Center for Disease Control and
Prevention data indicates that native women and girls
experience a murder rate 10 times higher than the national
average. Tragically, I have seen these stats firsthand in my
home State of Oklahoma, which ranks number two on the list of
the top 10 States with Native-American and Alaska-Native
missing person cases.
While these statistics are alarming, data collection is,
unfortunately, still lacking, and it will require sufficient
awareness and resources to solve this crisis once and for all.
I have supported and cosponsored several bills aimed at
increasing data collection, recordkeeping, and reporting,
including the Savanna's Act and Not Invisible Act, both of
which were signed into law in 2020. I also continue to join
resolutions recognizing the crisis of violence against native
women and girls and recognizing May 5 of each year as the
National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women and Girls. Because of the extreme lack of resources,
statutory roadblocks, and several other barriers, this crisis
will not be solved without the work and partnership of leaders
of the Federal, State, Tribal, and local law enforcement. To
put it into perspective, I often use the phrase ``Fishermen
know where to fish, hunters know where to hunt, and predators
know where to prey,'' and we cannot give predators a place to
prey anywhere, but especially in Indian Country. I have been
and will remain committed to ensuring that Federal Government
provides the services and resources needed to protect Native
Americans throughout Indian Country. Ending violence against
indigenous women will take all of us working together.
I want to thank Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Chellie
Pingree for holding this hearing and their continued leadership
on this issue. Through this subcommittee, Chairman Simpson has
increased funding for Tribal law enforcement programs,
including an 82-percent increase for the Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women Initiative. The Interior bill also provides a
33-percent increase for the Violence Against Women Act to
support prevention and responses to domestic violence, sexual
assault, dating violence, and stalking. This bill clearly
illustrates Chairman Simpson and this committee's commitment to
ending violence against indigenous women and girls.
I look forward to hearing testimony from each of our
witnesses and engaging with each of you directly to understand
what can be done to provide Tribes and Federal agencies with
what they need to protect these women and girls. Thank you,
Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree. I particularly
appreciate both of your leadership on this issue. I would say
that, frankly, about all the members up here, but I want to
single out my friend Ms. McCollum again. You do not have to
wonder where these people are going to be, and, you know, we
actually have more robust funding in this bill than our Senate
counterparts. I do not think that is because they do not care.
I just think we will win that debate if we can get to
negotiation because that will not be a Democrat or a Republican
position, that will be a House position, and, frankly, I think
the Senate will follow in that. I think we have a rare
opportunity here thanks to the leadership on this committee on
both sides of the aisle to make a major step forward if we can
just get to the negotiating table.
This is not going to be one of the areas where we disagree.
I think it is one of the areas where we already agree, and I
think it is one of the areas where this chamber will prevail in
a negotiation. Our friends in the Senate will work with us on
this. They are not going to be at odds with us on either side
of the aisle. With that, again, Mike, thank you very much for
holding this hearing. I yield back.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Chairman. I hope you are right. I
hope we can get to a negotiation eventually and get this done.
That is a whole different issue.
We will begin with our panelists. Before I do, I should say
we have an empty witness chair sitting on just the other side
of Mr. Cole as to represent the missing and murdered indigenous
women across this country. They are listening.
Our first panel includes Eugenia Charles-Newton, Law and
Order Committee chair and member of the Navajo Nation; Abigail
Echo-Hawk, a very famous name in Idaho, executive vice
president at Seattle Indian Health Board, and director of the
Urban Indian Health Institute, and member of the Pawnee Nation;
Cheryl Horn, member of the Montana Missing Indigenous Persons
Task and Member of the Assiniboine.
Mr. Simpson. Mary Jane Miles, member of the Nez Perce
Tribal Executive Committee and member of the Nez Perce Tribe;
and Maulian Bryant, Wabanaki Alliance incoming director and
member of the Penobscot Nation.
Each panel will present their opening statements, and then
members will be provided an opportunity to ask questions of all
of them.
Eugenia, you are up.
STATEMENT OF EUGENIA CHARLES-NEWTON, LAW AND ORDER COMMITTEE
CHAIR AND MEMBER OF THE NAVAJO NATION
Ms. Charles-Newton. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and
thank you for the opportunity to give my statement here today.
I want to begin by reading aloud some of the names of those who
are currently missing: Paul Begay, who is a male Dine relative
from Dilkon, Arizona, who is the earliest known missing Dine
man that we have in our records. He was last seen in California
in 1972. Anna Curley, a female Dine relative from Kayenta,
Arizona, who is the earliest known missing woman we have in our
records. Ms. Curley was last seen in Kayenta, Arizona. Ella Mae
Begay, an elderly masaani, who was a grandmother from
Sweetwater, Tolikan, Arizona, who went missing June 15, 2021,
which was the same day Ranelle Bennett also went missing from
the community that I represent in Shiprock. Everett Charlie was
a classmate of mine, who I remember danced to Michael Jackson
in our first grade class. I did not even know he was missing.
These are a few of the names that I want to read aloud so they
know they are not forgotten.
The total number of Dine relatives missing on the Navajo
Nation that we know of is 75 as of today. The total number of
Dine relatives murdered, we do not have that number. It is
unaccounted for because we lack the manpower to track those
cases properly and we also lack the infrastructure to record
all cases. We still have 3G on our Nation in certain places on
the Navajo Nation and no cell coverage in large areas of our
Nation, but I digress.
The two major issues that hinder justice for missing,
murdered Dine relatives on the Navajo Nation are jurisdictional
lines that many families and relatives do not see in non-
communication and/or miscommunication amongst law enforcement
and non-communication and/or miscommunication with families.
Invisible jurisdictional lines you probably are asking what is
that, so let me explain. When crimes begin in towns that border
the Navajo Nation, they are sometimes passed along to the
Navajo Nation law enforcement for jurisdictional reasons.
Sadly, because the person is Navajo, it is sometimes assumed
that Navajo will handle the case. In essence, the buck gets
passed, and because the Navajo Nation lacks funding, has
shortage of law enforcement, and faces recruitment and
retention issues, cases go unresolved. They lose momentum, and
cold cases become frozen cases in time. As time marches on, the
communication stops, and everybody assumes that somebody is
doing the work.
I have a good friend of mine. Her name is Vangie Randall. I
knew her since high school. She had a son named Zachariah
Juwaun Shorty. Zach went missing in the midst of COVID, July
21, 2020. When she reported the situation to Farmington, New
Mexico, the Farmington Police Department, which borders the
Navajo Nation, they told her that the Navajo Nation law
enforcement would be taking the case. Four days after she
reported Zach missing or she tried to report him missing, he
was found dead in a field in Nenahnezad, New Mexico on the
Navajo Nation. The jurisdictional issues prevented the case
from being properly investigated, and it also prevented the
communication that was supposed to be going on between law
enforcement and Ms. Vangie. Vangie talks about her son all the
time. She takes part in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women (MMIW) marches. Zach was only 23 when he was murdered,
and his murderer still walks free today. Vangie says that she
starts her day every day with a prayer, not to find the person
who killed her son, but a prayer for herself and for those who
are also experiencing MMIW.
As with many Nations and reservations, the Navajo Nation
lacks the proper number of personnel to investigate crimes, and
when someone goes missing, little to no resources are devoted
to the case, and if there are resources that are available, it
is only for the first few days that these resources are allowed
to be used. The Navajo Nation is 27,000 square miles and has
roughly 200,000 Navajos living on the Navajo Nation. Our Nation
spans across three States--Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah--and
is the size of West Virginia. We are the largest Tribe in the
United States, and we have roughly 400,000 Navajo citizens who
are registered as Navajos.
In terms of law enforcement, we have an estimated 218 law
enforcement officers, when the national average per the Tribal
Law and Order Act reports that 2.8 officers are needed per
1,000 members of the service population. That would mean that
we would need 560 officers to meet the national average. As for
criminal investigators, the Navajo Nation has 32. These
investigators are responsible for investigating crimes
committed by an Indian and those crimes that fall under the
Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1153. These 32
investigators work in conjoint cooperation with the Federal
Bureau of Investigations and United States Attorney's Office.
On Navajo, because of the lack of personnel, our
investigators also serve in the unique capacity of being not
only investigators, but also coroners and medical examiners.
Instead of spending their time investigating crimes and looking
for our Dine relatives who are missing or murdered, our
investigators spend 75 percent of their time investigating all
deaths, even those that are better considered to be natural
deaths. They complete and certify death certificates, review
medical records, assess medications, conduct home assessments,
administer external examinations of bodies, draw fluids. They
do all of the stuff that coroners and medical examiners
normally do. Be mindful that Navajo proposed for 2-year funding
to establish a medical legal death investigation system, and,
if approved, this would allow the Navajo Nation to be the first
Tribe to hire coroners and possibly one medical examiner to
handle deaths on the Navajo Nation. This would allow our
criminal investigators to spend more of their time
investigating major crimes, such as missing and murdered
crimes.
Public safety and justice should be a bipartisan issue. I
appreciate the time. Yes, thank you for hearing my words. My
name is Eugenia Charles-Newton. I proudly serve my Dine people
as a council delegate on the 25th Navajo Nation Council. I
represent the largest community on the Navajo Nation, which is
Shiprock, New Mexico. I am Bit'ahnii, born for Ashiihi. My
maternal grandfathers are Tlaashchi'I and my paternal
grandfathers are Tabaaha.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Charles-Newton follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Eugenia.
Abigail.
STATEMENT OF ABIGAIL ECHO-HAWK, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AT
SEATTLE INDIAN HEALTH BOARD, DIRECTOR OF THE URBAN INDIAN
HEALTH INSTITUTE AND MEMBER OF THE PAWNEE NATION
Ms. Echo-Hawk. Thank you. It is an honor and a privilege to
be here today, and I want to start by thanking this committee
for doing something I did not think would be done, and that is
answer the call of the community, to recognize that
accountability is necessary and needed as we look at what has
happened previously with legislation like Savanna's Act and Not
Invisible Act, the resources that are supposed to be available
across the Department of Justice through Tribal carveouts and
through resources that are supposed to flow through counties
into Tribal communities. I was not sure I would ever sit at a
table where I would be able to talk to you about what the
accountability looks like, so thank you. I am in deep gratitude
for your answer to the call that we put forward to have this
hearing.
I am Abigail Echo-Hawk. I am an enrolled citizen of the
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma on my father's side. I was born and
raised in the heart of Alaska with the Upper Ahtna and
Athabaskan people of Mentasta Lake, Alaska. I live and serve in
the city of Seattle on the land of the Coast Salish people as
the executive vice-president of the Seattle Indian Health
Board, which is an Indian healthcare provider in an urban
setting, in addition to a federally qualified health center. I
am blessed to serve my community in the darkest of times that
could ever be experienced, and that is when your loved one goes
missing, when your child is gone and you never hear from them
again, or when your loved one is found under the ground that
held them, waiting for justice, justice that they often never
see.
In 2018, I co-authored the very first report on missing and
murdered indigenous women and girls, the very first data report
that put into the hands of the Tribal warriors who sit in our
Tribal councils, those who operate in our urban settings, the
families and the community members and the grassroots
organizers who have been screaming for justice for their
invisible loved ones, not for 10 years, 20 years, but for more
than 500 years. That data report showed that we had places like
Oklahoma who ranked second for the most missing and murdered
people, the State of Washington, and others, but what we had
actually focused on was those that were missing in urban
settings. This report was used because we also found that the
then drafts of Savanna's Act would not have affected Savanna
Greywind, Savanna Greywind who was brutally murdered, her baby
cut from her, taken while she died. Savanna Greywind, in the
initial writings of that legislation, would not have been
affected because she was killed off reservation. That report
was focused on the urban Indians like myself.
I want to be very clear: urban is where I live; Tribal is
who I am. That is the same for all of our populations who have
deep ties to their Tribal communities, whether they live in
cities, whether they are able to migrate back and forth for
ceremony, for family, or whether, because of imposed poverty,
they have never been able to leave those cities. After being
forced, they will be removed during the relocation. These
people are suffering in the same way that our Tribes are
suffering, like my relative here just shared about her
reservation. In that report, we found that not only were people
missing and murdered, but that law enforcement was not
collecting the data, and we saw here at the Capitol, this data
conversation begin to rage in a way that was so beautiful that
we saw it in Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act. When it
was signed into law, we were ecstatic because not only at that
point had we worked with Members of Congress to ensure that
urban Indians were represented in Savanna's act and the Not
Invisible Act, but that also the resources for our Tribal
people were going to be there.
However, for those of us serving in the urban settings, the
promises of Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act have never
come. The urban Indians have been left behind in resources. We
have been left behind in resources and trainings. The law
enforcement officers that I work with often tell me we know it
is a problem in our city, and we have no idea how to address
it. They do not know how to access the trainings that the
Department of Justice says they have. They do not know how to
get the trainings on how to work with Tribal communities and to
communicate with them when their loved ones go missing.
When that report first came out, I remember presenting it
to a group of Tribal leaders, and afterwards, an elder came up,
and she held my face in her hands and she pulled me toward her,
and she said, Abigail, I have buried every one of my sisters
covered in bruises, and not a single one of them have I ever
seen justice for. She said, I will carry you in my heart and in
my prayers as you, the team, and all of the advocates that I am
on this table with right now carry and push for justice.
We are not seeing justice with Savanna's Act and the Not
Invisible Act, and, in fact, it took more than almost 2 years
for them to just appoint members to the Not Invisible Act
Commission. I have heard from both the Commission members and
from the community that that was a rushed process as a result
of them trying to rush through, and according to the Government
Office of Accountability Report, they said it was a result of
COVID is what slowed them down. Well, COVID was what affected
the community of members I was working with as we saw an
increase in both murder and violence as a direct result of
being quarantined with abusers, stories of individuals who were
in the Midwest and burned alive in the middle of a field, of
families who had their loved ones taken and trafficked away
from them. It was not just happening, it was actually happening
more, and that delay harmed us. That rushed process, which
resulted in some really fantastic recommendations, what our
leaders were able to do in a rushed amount of time was amazing,
but our families were not able to come and give the testimony
that they wanted to as a direct result of this rushed process.
They need to do better.
Our urban communities must be involved, and we have to
ensure that all of our people, regardless of where we live,
have the opportunity to see justice, like the young woman who
walked up to our agency from a mile away in downtown Seattle to
our clinic. She had been beaten, assaulted, her face covered in
blood, her clothes taken from her, where she walked in her
underwear and a T-shirt all the way up to our facility, and not
a single police officer, not a single community member, nobody
stopped or helped her until she walked into our clinic, sat in
a chair, and our traditional Indian medicine people came and
cared for her, which is why it is so important right now for
CMS to ensure that we can get reimbursed for traditional Indian
medicine and why it is integral to ensure that we have the full
funding of the Indian healthcare system because my community
and I are the ones caring for these people when the law
enforcement simply leave them behind.
There is continuous opportunity, however. We have actually
seen efforts by the FCC to copy what we have done in Washington
State, where I sit on the Task Force for Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women and Girls for Washington State, where I
assisted in co-authoring the very first legislation to create
the Red Alert, which is a missing endangered persons alert that
was then used as a template for the Feather Alert in
California. The conversations began at the FCC level, well,
what could this look like if we were going to do it, you know,
across the Nation, and there was promising conversations. When
in March 2024 a new alert was announced by the FCC, it was one
that encompassed all missing, endangered people, not just
American Indians and Alaska Natives. We need more than that.
What these alert systems have shown in both California and in
Washington is incredible success when we issue these alerts and
we use naming conventions, like the Feather Alert, like the Red
Alert, to find young people, like the story of a young person
who was kidnapped, trafficked, and found at a border.
We have to do better, and I urge you all to think about
authoring legislation because now the FCC has not done what we
had hoped they would. There is opportunity to have legislation
that would establish a national alert system for missing and
endangered American Indians, Alaska Natives, and indigenous
people. The Tribal consultations have already started. We have
members of the FCC, and this has very minimal fiscal impact as
it uses the already-established systems of the Amber Alert, the
Silver Alert, and what is now the Missing and Endangered
Persons Alert, these loved ones that are taken from us.
Recently, I was told the story of two trafficked
individuals, and this woman told me the story--they were
teenagers at the time--where they would be raped and assaulted
by those that had kidnapped them, and they were parked down by
the water, and they would rape them and they would beat them.
She remembers picking up her friend and carrying her to the
water that was next to where they were parked, and she carried
her friend into the water because she was too beaten and too
bruised and too harmed to walk herself. She bathed her in that
stream to wash away what had happened to her, and then it kept
happening again and again and again. An alert system like the
Red Alert, like the Feather Alert at the Federal level that
holds accountability, also creates training and opportunity for
law enforcement, and it also creates more awareness from law
enforcement and surrounding communities of this because I do
not want our loved ones to keep having to carry each other to
the water to wash away the trauma that they are experiencing.
My family, the Echo-Hawk family, has for many years since
the inception of the U.S. Government has served in our armed
forces. Our native people, it is one of our proudest
achievements is our serving in the armed forces. At this point
in time, we represent a little over 1 percent of all of those
in the active armed services and our communities have dedicated
ourselves to service to this country. However, we do know that
those in the military often suffer as a direct result of this
crisis, and it is something we have not talked about, nor has
it been addressed by any of the legislation that has been
passed, nor any of the efforts that we are aware of at the
State level, except for now in the State of Hawaii and the
State of Alaska. We know that our active-duty service members
who are American Indian/Alaska Natives suffer high rates of
sexual assault, domestic violence. However, finding that data
on what actually is happening is very, very difficult.
Then when we look at the crisis of those active-duty
service members who are not serving in the way like my Uncle
Brummett did. My Uncle Brummett was a Pawnee code talker. He
was a man who was dedicated to service to his community that
instilled into us what it meant to serve in the armed forces.
There are members in our armed forces who are not serving in
the way that my Uncle Brummett did, that many of your
constituents do, and instead, we see them victimizing those
Tribal communities and indigenous communities around them. My
organization is currently funding the work in the State of
Hawaii to look at the impact of missing and murdered indigenous
women and girls on native Hawaiians. In their very first
report, they found in one particular sting operation that of
those who were online soliciting sex from an identified 13-
year-old girl, 38 percent of those who were arrested as a
result of that sting were active-duty military. This is a
crisis that we have to address, and it is one that is important
to me.
I was a young girl who was affected by this violence. I
experienced sexual assault first at the age of 6. I attempted
suicide at the very first time when I was 9 years old. The
Creator must have had a plan for me because I don't know how I
lived. As a result of that trauma, the way that I acted as a
teenager was not always the way we would want our loved ones to
do. In February, I sat in a room with other people in Alaska,
and we talked about in that room about the active trafficking
of young girls like me to the military bases in Alaska. The
reason I was part of that conversation is because I had been
part of being victimized. I remember being 16 years old,
looking up on the wall of a barrack that I should not have been
in and seeing my name written down along with other women that
I knew, other girls, and I realized it was a list that this
military man that I was with was making of the girls that he
was victimizing, including myself, and he had written our names
on the wall. I can see that in my head right now in a picture
my name and other names.
We have to address what is going on in the Department of
Defense, and we need to know, and right now, we do not know the
baseline of what is happening. What I am asking for is that we
ask the military, and there is opportunity within the National
Defense Authorization Act for them to compile a report of
currently available data on human trafficking, sexual assault,
domestic violence, and also homicide of both active-duty
military who are affected by this and those who are
perpetrators in the active-duty military. We need to know what
the impact is of the military on this crisis and of those
active-duty service members. They deserve safety, too. I carry
their stories with them.
I was with the women in Hawaii who were doing this work
recently, and she handed me her baby, who was about 4 months
old, and I was holding him on my chest. I thought about that
elder who said she carried me in prayer, and I thought about
the woman who washed her sister off in that stream by the river
as they were being trafficked, and I thought about this young
baby who I could feel his breath on my cheek, his hand reaching
up to pull my hair, just like I am sure many of you have held
your babies and your grandchildren. I thought this cannot be
the outcome for this young child. Our opportunity is now, the
accountability is now, and 4 years from now, I do not want to
be sitting in the same chair 8 years after the signing of
Savanna's Act and Not Invisible Act screaming into nothingness
that urban Indians are still not included. Please ensure that
there is accountability for urban Indian populations as we move
forward in doing everything we can to achieve justice. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Echo-Hawk follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Abigail.
Cheryl.
STATEMENT OF CHERYL HORN, MEMBER OF THE MONTANA MISSING
INDIGENOUS PERSONS TASK FORCE AND MEMBER OF THE ASSINIBOINE
TRIBE OF FORT BELKNAP
Ms. Horn. Good morning, everybody. I would also like to
repeat what she said in thanking you for bringing us to the
table. I am just the same as her. Let me start over. Hello. My
name is Cheryl Horn [Speaking native language]. Standing in the
Rain is my name. I was named by my grandfather, Gilbert Horn,
Sr., who also came to Washington on many visits and advocated
for our people, and he was a code talker. I just want you to
know that my name came from when he was standing in the
Himalayan Mountains in the rain for 30 days, so I try to stand
tall and take what I can, you know.
I am a grassroots advocate who came to Missing and Murdered
Indigenous People (MMIP) as a family member of two missing
girls, Tristen Gray and Selena Not Afraid. My nieces were both
found deceased, so I choose to speak up at any table I can.
With Selena, she was missing for 20 days, and she last left a
rest stop, and the authorities left the rest stop, but us as a
family, we did not leave. We stayed there. We camped there. We
slept there. We were the search party while the county sat
across the road at the other closed rest area. The State of
Montana turned the power on for us at this closed rest area,
and we were watched by the county, and we had to fight for
investigation. We had to fight for everything.
Then on day eight, Operation Lady Justice showed up, and
when he showed up, he told me they showed up because I would
not be quiet. Day eight, he showed up and I thought, Okay, we
are going to leave. Well, no, it includes a profile. First,
they will profile your child, so they didn't look on day eight.
We had to stay until day 13 when Operation Lady Justice brought
the official search team, and we were able to pack up, go back
into the urban city of Billings and resume our search efforts
there, at the same time, having people watch the rest area for
us, you know, just to verify that something is happening.
My niece was found on day 20 on a grid search. I believe
she was found on day 19 and we found out day 20, but the grid
search from Operation Lady Justice brought her home. When I was
standing there with my sister looking out into a dark field
with my uncle, a Marine veteran who was 60-something years old
protecting us, that is all we had, and my boyfriend, a 60-year-
old Marine vet in the middle of nowhere. When I stood there and
I looked out there and I told my sister, do you think she is
here, and she said, no. I said, I do not either, but we get her
back because we are going to get her back. We are not going to
quit until we get her back, one way or the other. When I get
her back, I will not stop because when she moves, there is
another girl standing behind her. How can I turn and walk away
after I have done that work to get my niece and made noise?
From there, you know, I just became a grassroots advocate
working on zero budget, having people call me because I went
through it. Here I am trying to heal and trying to deal with my
stuff, but at the same time we were at the rest area, I was in
Billings helping a sex-trafficked victim get back to South
Dakota at 3 a.m., in the morning. I was providing her food,
clothes, water, and security, and in that little time she went
from Seattle to me, there was a black man already trying to get
her to Alabama in that short of time. From Billings to Rapid
City, here we were crossing our fingers praying that she got
off in Rapid City, and she did. I had to kind of tell him some
untruth about me. He is like, are you a flag, and I was wearing
my pajamas and I said, yes. In every stop you go, there is
going to be one just like me.
You know, there are things you have to do as families to
get the ball rolling and to get somebody to hear you, and I
believe our biggest barrier is the lack of proper investigation
and prosecution. I come from a Tribal level, but I have been on
county and State issues, too. I am on the Montana Task Force,
and we recently had a search and rescue training, and this is
just an example of what we have to deal with at home. I had a
hard time getting law enforcement to come to our free training.
We had a missing person at the time, so they sent their drug
dog officer. We went through all the training, and when he was
done, I tried to talk to him about plans I had for our
community, and he looked at me and said I am too busy. I
probably would not even be doing this, after he wasted his
time, everybody's time coming to that. That is what we deal
with on a Tribal level.
You know, my MMIP budget is zero, yet I help people. I
advocate for a lady that lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her
daughter was killed in a domestic violence situation in
Montana. I am her advocate. She is not a Native American. I
advocate for everybody. I don't ask you where you come from,
what color you are, anything. You call me, I help you. I try to
find resources. That is all I can do. I cannot give resources
unless I have money in my pocket from my paycheck. You know, I
do not have resources. I do come from a Tribe that supports my
efforts, and if I do come with a serious enough issue, I do get
the support from my chairman, you know, but unfortunately,
Tribal programs, they are not a resource for us. I cannot go to
a Tribal program for a girl. The treatment programs, they are
taking them off to California, Oklahoma, everywhere for
treatment, getting them hooked up in their system with Medicaid
and then kicking them out. When you are out, Okay, all of a
sudden, you are missing again, right? Your family doesn't know
where you are in another State. I have no resources to get her
home. I have to beg on my Facebook page for people to donate.
She is probably not even coming to my reservation. She is
probably coming somewhere else, but we want to get her home.
We have formed a network where there was none. When my
nieces went missing, I stood in Billings' rooms and hollered
because nobody heard me with my first niece. Nobody heard me
when I looked for Tristen. You know what? We found her. We
found her killer because we made the cops look at the airport
evidence, and he got out after he ran over my niece. He looked
at her and he got back in his vehicle and he left. Three years
later when they closed his case, the county attorney in
Billings, Montana looked at me and said, he feared for his life
when he hit her, so he is free. We are not pressing any charges
on him because he feared for his life when he ran over my
niece. That is a concept that now is catching on in Montana. We
have other people now who have got hit, but they feared for
their life, so they get out of things. This fearing for your
life is an excuse, and the only person who should be fearing
for their life is the victims.
I guess I have not heard much on the Not Invisible Act
since it came into effect. When it comes to Operation Lady
Justice, Selena was the only case I can ever say that had any
effect. I have never had anybody reach out to me on all the
States and all the advocates I have to say that they were
affected. I made such a noise, my niece was helped, and that is
not right because not everybody is brave to stand up, not
everybody is brave to sit in front of you, but when their
people missing, they have to turn to somebody.
I guess in closing, I want to thank you for sharing this
space for me, you know. There are a lot of families that are
working on healing, and myself as a family, as advocate, I had
to step back, and you know what? I tried to step back, and I
could not. I had to take some mental health myself to heal from
my niece, but the whole time I was doing that, I felt guilt
because I knew people were not reaching out to me. I knew they
did not know what to do. I want to tell you on the plane ride
here, I stopped in Minnesota and I turned my phone on. I had a
message from a young girl in my community. She had recently
been held by gunpoint by her boyfriend and beat up, and she has
not heard from anybody. She does not know where it is. She is
scared to come back to our reservation, you know. We do not
have any followup as victims. We do not have a recourse. We sit
and wait for nothing. We sit and wait for no updates. This
young girl, I cannot help her today, but when I go home, I will
do my best to help her, which means asking the officers where
the investigation is, you know, just seeing where her case is,
and getting her some answers back.
Very seldomly do we address the mental health of this. As
an advocate, I went through it, so my main purpose is I try to
heal people. Not personally heal. I am not a healer, but I try
to find resources and I work toward healing with them. I
encourage them very much to heal and not be angry because if we
have anger, we are not getting anywhere, we are not going to
get anything done. I have heard it before. It is non-party. We
are humans, and I am not here just for every Native-American
girl. I am here for everybody who has been through this
injustice of murder, domestic violence, killings.
You know, I have a few names. If you can remember one and
Google one, my job has been done today because my point is that
these people are humans: Kaysera, Kaimani, Casey, Freeman,
Leon, Thomasine, Preston, Claiborne, Selena, Tristen, Ashley,
Cole, Willie. These are names I sat and wrote as I sit here.
These are not everybody I advocate. These are just the names
that popped in my cloudy head right now, you know, to remind
myself this is why I am here, and Shacaiah Blue Harding is
still missing. That is another thing, as her and her mom and
another victim of her perpetrator, we tracked him down. We went
on social media and found him when the Billings police told us
they could not find him. We could not get him to speak up for
Shacaiah, but we got his DNA. We got them to test his DNA, and
he popped hot on some backed-up raped kits in the State of
Montana. He is in jail on rape, but he will not tell us where
Shacaiah Blue Harding is, and he was the last person with her.
He was her boyfriend at the time, and she was hiding from him
at the time. All we can do is continue to talk about Shacaiah,
and if she is somewhere, let her know we won't give up on her.
I just want to thank you again, everybody, because from the
very beginning, this is where I pictured myself. I tried to
manifest this to come to Washington, D.C. When I finally got
it, I was really shocked, so I kind of stuttered to them, you
know. I am starstruck. When I was screaming out into a field in
the middle of the night, telling her that everybody who cares
is here, it was just our family. I am all for data, but I am
all for the resources that need to trickle down to the actual
mental health of families, the resources of families going to
look for their kids. Luckily, we have some nonprofits that have
been formed to do this, but even they are moving away from it.
Thank you for letting us come to the table and keeping our
ball rolling because this is a crisis. It is not an issue. It
is a crisis, and it is a crisis all across the United States,
and it is not just Indian Country. It is everybody. Everybody
gets injustice and everybody deserves justice. Thank you again
for allowing me.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Horn follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Cheryl.
Mary Jane.
STATEMENT OF MARY JANE MILES, VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE ELDREDGE:
PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVEMITTEE (NPTEC) AND MEMBER OF THE NEZ
PERCE TRIBE
Ms. Miles. [Speaking native language]. Good morning. I am
Mary Jane Miles. I am an elected representative serving on the
Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. I am also an ordained
Presbyterian minister in the Presbyterian Church USA. The
Nimiipuu, the Nez Perce people, want to thank this committee
and administration for their efforts, again, to understand the
needs of Indian Country and for the hand of friendship to hear
my thoughts on an issue very important to me and to many
others.
Missing and murdered indigenous people was first introduced
to me as a policy issue during my visit to Vancouver, B.C. I
heard how the First Nations were lamenting the murder of women
in that day that were not being investigated and the
invisibility of Native women in the crimes against them. I then
began to understand that there were unsolved murdered and
missing indigenous persons in the United States and that this
is not an isolated problem. Sometimes I feel that the Native
Americans are so few that we are very easy to forget. As you
can see, I am an older Native-American woman who knows of the
turbulence in a relationship as I myself am a domestic violence
survivor. During the time I endured that relationship, I
wondered why and how our Tribal people came to this dark time
with fractured relationships with no accountability. I believe
that diseases like drug and alcohol abuse play a big part in
the overall problem but also the poverty on the reservations as
well.
My inner being agonizes over the lack of worth given to
Native women and the senseless acts that lead to their harm. In
the past, people in power have not cared about native women,
but their families and their Tribes do. One instance that
touches my heart is the loss of a young woman I counseled who
was strangled by her partner. I had also counseled the
perpetrator beforehand, and I just happened to be a friend to
his father. I conducted the funerals of both the young woman
after the crime and the perpetrator's dad, who died shortly
thereafter. This was an awful time of unrest and sadness that
tore our community apart.
Women continue to be the backbone of our Tribal
communities. I like the way we handle life, the way we handle
difficult situations. Men need to be a part of that solution to
this very real problem on the reservation. As our Tribes grow
and change alongside the communities around us, some of the
traditional roles of the men have been taken away from them.
Native men have historically been providers, but with the
advent of reservation life, this role was taken away from them.
We need to get to work, combating the root of the problem,
which include gaps in law enforcement and the lack of
communication between jurisdictions. We need to work on
establishing and funding recovery centers, extended family
support programs, and fully supporting Tribal law enforcement
and detention centers. We will use some of the funding to
assist with training our police force and to assist with
investigations.
Another proposed program is designed to help persons who
are vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking by
providing backpacks that contain personal safety alarms and a
flashlight as well as other safety items. We are also
strengthening our data collection for vulnerable persons by
creating a data base with information that can be provided to
law enforcement if a person goes missing. We are also working
to coordinate information sharing with other regional Tribes to
lessen the time it takes for us to know when a person has gone
missing on a sister reservation.
In closing, I would like to say that I am encouraged that
there are movements to highlight this issue and hearings like
today to help recognize and address the wrongs to the native
women and men and help prevent them in the future. I am tired
of crying out loud on this issue, and I do not want to do that
anymore. I want to experience progress, and I want to thank you
again for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Miles follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Mary Jane.
Maulian.
STATEMENT OF MAULIAN BRYANT, WABANAKI ALLIANCE INCOMING
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND MEMBER OF THE PENOBSCOT NATION
Ms. Bryant. Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and
honorable members of this committee, I so appreciate you
holding this hearing and giving us space today. I have served
as a Tribal Ambassador for my Tribe, the Penobscot Nation, for
over 7 years. I will soon advocate for all of the Wabanaki
Tribes in Maine as the incoming Executive Director for the
Wabanaki Alliance [Speaking native language]. My name is
Maulian Bryant. I am from the Penobscot Nation, and these
warrior women here today have given me the courage to say that
I am also a domestic violence victim. A man once looked me in
the eye and said, I could kill you right here, and nobody would
ever know. He was right, and I am so lucky he did not. I am a
mother to three daughters. Iris is two, Layla is 15, and
Carmela just turned 18. Their safety and well-being has driven
much of my work and advocacy on the issue of missing and
murdered indigenous women and people.
One in three indigenous women will be the victim of a
violent crime in her lifetime, and there are four of us in my
immediate family. The societal component of this crisis and why
it has been so hard to combat and address cannot be overlooked.
When I was young and watched the Walt Disney movie, ``Peter
Pan,'' it was the first time I can recall seeing stereotypes
about my people. The Indian encampment scene and the use of
stereotypes around Tribal women are a sad example of this.
Tiger Lily, the Indian princess, she is a child but made to
look exotic and tempting. The older women in the camp are brash
and mean and called racial slurs. Even the Disney version of
``Pocahontas,'' which tells a story meant to portray progress
and honor, gets it wrong. Pocahontas was likely 14 when she met
the English soldiers. She was taken to Europe where she died of
disease, away from her family, culture, and homelands. These
stereotypes have broadly applicable implications, and,
unfortunately, have been propagated throughout our society. A
lot of our experience as real indigenous women has been
minimized and at times silenced altogether while Americans
embrace these false creations of us instead of seeing us as
real people. It makes us objects and it makes us less than
human, and candy coating our history and reality does not help
anything. It makes us more invisible.
When an indigenous woman goes missing, there is not the
same attention and action as when a Caucasian woman does. The
primary reasons for this are three-fold: societal indifference,
jurisdictional and coordination issues, and a lack of resources
for Tribal law enforcement agencies. The false conceptions of
our people often lead to victim blaming and attitudes that
minimize attention given to these cases. If an indigenous woman
goes missing from a bar or a boyfriend's home or if she has
addiction or family issues, she is often seen as putting
herself in harm's way, and she is often seen as the problem. It
is a fact that a lot of ``negative behaviors and dysfunction''
are a lasting consequence of the horrors inflicted on our
people in the colonization of this country, be it the theft of
land, the pandemics, the residential school policy, and the
theft of our children, the outlawing of our religion. We are
real people deserving of equal rights and treatment, and we are
healing from so much.
Jurisdictional issues are equally harmful. There needs to
be clear duties and processes delineated before, during, and
after these crimes occur. Until recently, the Wabanaki people
in Maine lacked equal access to the Tribal provisions of the
Violence Against Women Act due to our outdated and oppressive
1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. Fortunately,
after years of work and lots of support from Ranking Member
Pingree, we were able to address this, and now Violence Against
Women Act (VAWA) cases within the Penobscot Nation's
jurisdiction are being fully handled by our Tribe. Ensuring
that indigenous people report the crimes and feel safe and
supported, doing so is important because due to a lack of
justice, which you have heard all about, victims can feel like
it is not worth the time or effort in an already traumatic
situation to take the needed steps.
Our own Tribal law enforcement agencies need additional
support. While Tribal law enforcement funding has increased in
recent years, the increases are far from meeting the actual
level of need. One of the largest barriers is actually the
growth of unrelated line items connected with contract support
costs and 105(l) leases, which are taking up a larger and
larger portion of Congress' allocation toward our budgets. It
is critical that these be moved to the mandatory side of the
budget so that funding increases go toward real program
improvements and services rather than fulfilling mandatory
contract obligations.
Funding the key programs for our people in the Federal
budget and upholding the trust responsibility helps keep our
communities safe. It helps us in terms of health, stewardship
of natural resources, public safety, and keeping our communal
and cultural connections strong. All of the appropriations
decisions you all make in this room impact this crisis because
in order for our people to protect each other and heal from
past trauma, we need to have resources and means to survive.
Thank you so much for the invitation to come here today. I
am deeply, deeply honored to be on this panel with these
amazing women putting in such hard heartbreaking work.
[Speaking native language]. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bryant follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, and thank all of you for being
here, and we will go to members' questions here in just a
minute. I want to tell you, I do not know if you know this,
Mary Jane, but I have been on this committee for 22 years, so I
have been dealing with funding for Indian Country for a number
of years, learned an awful lot from my chairman here, so I am
involved. I listen to the news all the time. I knew nothing
about this issue until about a year ago. I was watching Idaho
reports, and I believe it was you that was on the program
talking about murdered/missing indigenous women. I am sitting
there and I am stunned, and then I am pissed off or PO'd after
that and said we have got to do something about this. We have
got to do better.
I think all five of you demonstrated this picture up here.
When I first became chairman of this committee the first time,
I asked Assiniboine Tribe to give me something to hang on the
wall, and they had one of their artists paint this. They
explained to me, this is an attempt to demonstrate, and I think
in the narrative there, it says, ``The strength of Native-
American Women,'' as you all just demonstrated it. Mr. Cole.
Mr. Cole. Thank you very much. I look at that picture and I
think, well, that is typical. You give the Federal Government
something, you never get it back. First, I want to join the
chairman, thank you for your testimony. That is difficult
testimony. I know it is very difficult for you personally to
talk about some of these experiences, but it is important. It
is important for people to understand the reality. We can talk
numbers and jurisdiction and statistics. There is nothing as
powerful as a personal story to drive home a point, and so
thank all of you for doing that.
I have just got some general questions that I would ask,
you know, just start if I could, you move across, and if it is
something you do not care to comment about, that is fine, too,
but I am very interested in your perspective. If you had to
identify, and you did a little bit of this, a couple of you in
your testimony, what is the greatest needs that Tribes are
facing, and what exactly should Congress do about it to
specifically deal with this problem? I will start, if I can,
with you, Eugenia.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Thank you for that question, Chairman
Cole, and thank you for being a supporter of Indian Country and
for the work that you do. I do want to State that we have a
booklet that we passed out. I know that there are some who
believe that data is not really important. We just recently
started collecting our data, and we have that all within our
booklet. If you turn to page 16, there is actually a picture of
all of the people in our Tribe who have gone missing or who are
missing. Again, we do not have actual pictures of those who are
murdered, but we do have the information within the booklet for
those who have gone missing. There it is. We also have
information on there about the criminal cases that have been
declined by the U.S. Department of Justice.
I think, to answer your question, it is easy to say that
money is going to solve everything, but in reality, it is not.
We get money to help assist with some of the issues. However,
there is so much red tape involved, red tape at the Federal
level that make it almost impossible for us to spend money the
way that we see fit, and I say that specifically because we are
a 638 contract Tribe, so we do receive 638 funding. However,
there is so much limitations on those fundings that make it
hard for us to be able to look at the issue that is in front of
us and say we are going to use these funds toward this issue.
Again, I think it is easy for us to say that money is going to
solve it, but I don't think it is.
What I would like to ask this committee and for the new
incoming Members of Congress, is to say that understanding is
very important. Knowing who we are as a people is very
important, knowing that there are 575 Tribes, separate Tribes
that are different from each other, that have different issues,
that are treated differently, I think is really the first step
in understanding. Just as you stated, Chairman Simpson, you did
not really know about the issues until just up a year ago.
There are many issues within Indian Country that you know we
face, that all contribute to what is happening with missing,
murdered indigenous women. I think I would have to say it is
just that understanding and that education that everybody
should have that responsibility of taking on, especially if you
are going to be representing us as a people. Thank you.
Mr Cole. Thank you very much. I will say this, just
comment, and then I will move on, obviously, to Abigail. The
numbers are important because we know domestic abuse and rape
and violence occurs in every ethnicity and every part of the
country. When it is this staggeringly out of scale compared to
other groups, and it is horrible no matter who it happens to,
no matter what the circumstances, but it was the thing that
caught my eye as I began and you actually had some of these
statistics, Mr. Chairman, in your opening remarks, this is way
out of proportion to what happens in other areas.
We clearly have a very unique problem. We clearly have a
lack of jurisdiction in many cases. I still do not think we
empower Tribal law enforcement enough on their own lands with
their own people. That is just my personal opinion. We clearly
have enormous resource problem, and there is a differential
here. It is not the same for everybody. Anyway, thank you for
your work. Abigail, if we may, your thoughts on what we should
do? If Congress could do two or three things, where would you
focus the effort?
Ms. Echo-Hawk. Treaty and trust responsibility is not in
because we stepped off of Tribal land. A recognition, again,
that enrolled members, federally recognized Tribes, State-
recognized Tribes, there is the necessity to ensure that our
safety is a priority regardless. Those statistics, which some
have been talked about here, from my 2018 report that I co-
authored, which we had no resources for, no funding. In fact, I
self-funded it with speaking fees I charged with $20,000 we
were able to assist in mobilizing the country to pass Savanna's
Act and Not Invisible Act. What if we had $200,000? What if we
had $2 million?
When it comes to ensuring that we have the appropriate
collection of data, which is also a problem across the
Department of Justice, and I am adding in the Department of
Defense where there is not only a lack of data, but a lack of
data standards and operability where they can share data across
data systems, is an area that definitely needs investment and
accountability. In fact, there was an evaluation of DOD data
specifically related to violence in the military in 2023, and
they found that DOD was not in compliance with the basic
standards of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in regards
to race and ethnicity. That is definitely an area of investment
that is needed.
To also ensure somebody like Savanna Greywind is not just
used as a name on a piece of legislation, but the actual
impacts of this crisis in urban settings are held up and given
the appropriate resources that are needed, including getting
law enforcement the appropriate trainings and working with a
family who had a family member who was killed in the city, and
worked with them to communicate with their Tribe. They were
able to get family communication that assisted them in the
conviction of her killer. Then at the sentencing of the man who
murdered her, the Tribe was also given the opportunity--not
just the family members, it is normally just family members,
and those impacted--the Tribal council was able to make a
statement, so providing those resources and trainings, and
particularly on how to work with our Tribal communities.
I am a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. My Tribe
cares what happens to me, and they deserve to know and to be a
part of that. Allocation of resources, training, and
accountability to ensure that urban Indians are appropriately
represented, and recognizing treaty and trust responsibility
did not end because I stepped off our reservation.
Mr Cole. I think it is a hugely important point, and this
committee deals with this in the healthcare. It is one of the
reason why we have Indian healthcare clinics that are not on
Tribal lands. Certainly, that is why it is in Oklahoma City,
for instance, and they do fantastic work, but you are exactly
right. Just because you are not on a reservation does not mean
that you lost, the government gets to get out of trust and
treaty responsibilities, so that is extraordinarily important.
If we can, Cheryl, go on to you.
Ms. Horn. On this, I guess if you ask me, where I work is
with the families and with the courts, with the law
enforcement. Recently, we have a man murdered. He missed the
first time, so he pumped his gun and shot him again a second
time. He feared for his life, according to the feds who came to
our reservation, and when our family started asking them
questions, they walked out on them. They left the meeting, and
the family has questions. We all have questions, and it does
not hurt to answer them. If they are not going to charge
somebody for a murder, who is holding them accountable for not
doing their job? If they are picking and choosing what cases,
who is holding them accountable for letting people down?
I am right now advocating for our Tribal courts to pick up
these cases. We are only allowed to hold people in jail for 1
year, and a lot of people do not deserve to be out around the
public in 1 year. You go down to our Tribal courts and they are
weak. Our Tribal courts are weak. My court could not even get a
jury selection together for a jury trial, so I was picked on. I
got a letter last week, five juries for five things, and I
asked why. They only have about a pool of 60 jurors on a
reservation where we know each other already, so this is a
court failure. This is oversight of the court's failure,
oversight of the whole Tribal government's failure when our
courts are not picking up these cases for our people.
Selena was murdered by six people, six adults. One person
was charged for endangered and welfare of a child, and she was
not even one of those six. She was the adult. She had
permission to go for a ride with, and the lady charged wasn't
even with the ones who took my niece. Not one of them, six
people, were charged for anything, not even contributing to a
child, alcohol to her. They kept saying she was full of
alcohol, and she passed out. She had no alcohol in her. Her
autopsy showed nothing. We get excuses and we get the door
closed in our face.
I strongly, strongly hope that somewhere, somebody can put
the hatchet down, put the hammer down on our Tribal systems to
pick up for our people, where, instead of just blaming the
Feds, because I worked both with the Feds and law enforcement.
I asked law enforcement, why are they not taking them? What are
they telling you? They are getting us on little things in the
investigation, so we are doing better. We are handing these
complete investigations over now, and they are not prosecuting
them, and nobody is held accountable. Nobody has to sit at the
table with these families. They can walk out the door, and I do
not think that is Okay. I really would like to see this funding
that comes down.
I also want to see some change, some strictness in our
Tribal government. I want our Tribal governments to get
stronger in our Tribal courts where we have the chance to, if
it is murder, we got 1 year, if it is domestic violence, we got
1 year. Instead, they are waiting for three domestic violences
to add up so they can turn it over to the feds. That is my
wish, is I could ask for more funding, but when we get to more
funding, are we going to mismanage it? I want to see more
accountability from the Federal Government all the way down to
our Tribal law enforcement, everybody at the table because if
you are just walking out and slamming the door on families and
nobody is asking you why you did that, you are going to
continue to do that.
I would just like things to get stronger on the level that
I am to help, you know, because that is the barriers I am
running into. Like, this girl that called me, she is just a
young girl in her early, early 20's, was held at gunpoint, and
he is still free. Actually, I think he might be the one who
drove a car that killed another man, if I think hard enough. He
is still free. The bottom line is he is still free in my
community, and that is what I want to see go away. I want
accountability, and I want people to do their jobs.
Mr. Cole. Thank you.
Mary Jane.
Ms. Miles. Thank you. I like to feel comfortable with the
empty chair that Mickey put. Is that a shawl? Yeah, and that is
what we do in our celebrations, and it made me feel accepted. I
just pray a lot, as a minister, that you would want to know us
more and you would want to read our histories more. We travel
to all the memorials for the Chief Joseph attempt to get into
Canada, and it means so much for the younger people to
understand what their forefathers have done for them and to set
up a government system with a Tribal government, much like the
United States. We look at you, and we would like you to look at
us and see us as a people.
I liked your remark on the women up there. I saw a picture,
a portrait of women in buckskin dresses, and underneath the
caption was, ``They are only as beautiful as their men take
care of them.'' The men was hunting and fishing for them,
providing for them, and they were the backbone of the family
unit. When reservation life came, there is nothing but clerical
jobs. We took over the bringing home the bacon and kind of
stripped the men of being the head of the family. There are
things that you need to know that we are about and we are not a
stoic people. We have Indian humor, and it goes from Tribe to
Tribe. I can understand her humor or her humor. If she would
tell me some joke, I would laugh my head off, probably because
it is similar. Do not think we are stoic Indians because we are
not. We enjoy life. We enjoy life, and the beauty of our
culture is beautiful. I am looking at her ring down there. It
is beautiful. We have talents, so look at us and get
inquisitive about how we live.
Mr. Cole. Thank you very much. I am going to butcher.
Pronounce that for me.
Ms. Bryant. Maulian.
Mr Cole. Maulian.
Ms. Bryant. Yes.
Mr Cole. Thank you very much.
Ms. Bryant. Perfect. A lot of great things have been said.
Probably going last, there is not too much to add. I had a
couple of sort of broad thoughts. You know, it is not hard to
hear our sharing humanity here and want to help, and want to
act and want to do things. This permeates a lot of other areas
of Tribal issues. I think when we are talking about Tribal
sovereignty and self-determination and natural resources and
health. It is all connected. I would encourage all members to,
you know, when you are approaching sort of a Tribal bill,
remember this interaction and remember that everything we
talked about is likely impacted by a lot of things you are
seeing about Tribal people. This is not, you know, existing in
a silo. It is all interconnected.
Then I will speak quickly to sort of an extra barrier we
have in Maine, that Representative Pingree is quite familiar
with, and I mentioned. Back in 1980, we had a very large case
settled between the State because we had discovered that
roughly two-thirds of the State was rightly ours, and it was
taken illegally because the treaties were never ratified. I
think this is tale as old as time for a lot of Tribal Nations,
but we have this settlement that our leaders agreed to, likely
under some duress, you know, the time of living in poverty and
a lot of these things we have talked about through the
generations. They were promised a settlement dealing with land
and money, and we did get some land back and we settled this
lawsuit, but the State was very adept at their negotiating, and
it has kept us oppressed and held back from our full experience
as federally recognized Tribal Nations. Should there ever be an
opportunity to look at fixing this situation in the State of
Maine and restoring our access to Federal Indian law that right
now we can have access to it, but there are a lot of games to
be played with the State, that would help our people quite a
bit. The Wabanaki Confederacy is Penobscot, Passamaquoddy,
Maliseet, and Mi'kmaq, and we are heavily impacted by this
restrictive settlement, and it impacts this crisis as well.
Mr Cole. Thank you very much. A lot of other questions, but
I know there is a limit on time, so I will yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Ms. Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Thank you, all. Really, I just
appreciate your just extremely rich testimony so much and
sharing your personal stories, but also the amazing work you
have already been doing to try to work on this issue, and you
often didn't have the support or assistance that you need. I
was thinking of asking the same question as Chair Cole just
because I think for us trying to get down to, you know, what
can we get done at this moment in time? Clearly, it is a very
multilayered issue and a lot of things that we have to do, so I
appreciate all the things you have already covered from the
data, the lack of law enforcement, or funding for law
enforcement. I think when we had our witness day, it seems to
me it was something like 13 percent of the need that was
actually being funded by the Federal Government. It was under
20 percent at any rate, so no community could operate at that
level of funding.
I think we cannot discount that the number of investigators
and just all of the things. I really appreciated the thoughts
about the specific alert system. We all now see on our phones
an alert when someone wanders off who has dementia, or all
those things all the time, or a missing child, and I had never
really thought about how the specificity of that would also
bring a lot of attention to this particular problem. I think,
as others have said, the magnitude of this problem is little
understood by most people. As women, we have a lot of concerns
about domestic violence and rape crisis and all the other
things that happen to women, but to know that this is orders of
magnitude worse, and, you know, it is historic, and it is just
not changing.
I think the other two questions I might ask you to just go
into a little bit more as a group is sort of this
jurisdictional issue because I think that confuses many of us,
and obviously there have been court cases that have made it
even cloudier, and that it is different from Tribe to Tribe, so
I think maybe if you all want to comment about that a little
bit more. Also just wanted to appreciate what Chairman Cole
said as well about the urban issue because I think we often do
not separate out this, and you think, oh, well, you are in an
urban area, you have excellent law enforcement. It is not the
same as a Tribe where there is jurisdictional issues, but the
fact is, if people aren't properly trained or don't understand,
the stories are horrific.
I am just going to start with Director Bryant, so thank
you. Thank you for sharing your own personal story, and then I
will ask all of you to go down through this, but I would be
interested in your thought about the Tribal courts and the
jurisdictional issues. If you just want to take that one step
further, I appreciate you pointing out that the Maine Tribes as
so many different Tribes have different constraints on them,
but ours, we feel, is uniquely difficult and challenging. You
know, VAWA was a great example because we assume that is one
thing that has been really important. Just describe a little
bit more that either the hoops that we had to go through or
that is an example of the Federal funding that does not
naturally come to our Tribes in the way it does to others.
Asking you that, and then asking all of you, just any comments
you have about the jurisdictional issues.
Ms. Bryant. Yes, it is a great example to talk about the
Federal Violence Against Women Act. The jurisdictional issues
we talk about, a big part of this is before VAWA, if you had a
domestic violence situation on Tribal land, of course, so
keeping in mind that inequity there in urban areas. If the
perpetrator was not a Tribal member, you often could not bring
that into Tribal court, and that added to this level of
confusion where a lot of courts were like, well, those are
Tribal people, that is probably not our thing, and then Tribal
courts were like, well, we do not have the jurisdiction here.
That is hard, that is traumatizing to victims, dragging them
around different places and having them retell these stories
and then not getting justice.
The Tribes in Maine, because of the Settlement Act, there
is a provision in there that says if a law passes at the
Federal level meant to benefit federally recognized Tribal
Nations, the State can decide at any time that they do not want
us to have access to that law if it impacts their jurisdiction.
In the 2015 reauthorization of VAWA, the Penobscot Nation was
ready to start handling these cases. We assumed that this law
would apply to us. We actually got chosen to be part of a pilot
program nationwide, and then the State stepped in and said slow
down. We think this might impact our jurisdiction. We don't
want you having access to this law.
Then it took 7 years of advocacy, of lobbying, of working
at the State level and the Federal level to be mentioned in the
most recent reauthorization of VAWA. In that time of the
domestic violence incidences at Penobscot Nation, we got zero
convictions because they were all getting kicked out to State
courts and not going through the right process and zero
justice. Those are just the crimes that are reported and
someone is charged and arrested, not even speaking about
everything that else is going on. That is one example of the
specific barrier that we are facing and looking at.
There has been 150 or so Federal pieces of legislation that
have passed since 1980 that we have had the same issues with.
Some of them we have been able to work around and use, and a
lot of them have been blocked by the State. We are working at
the State and Federal level right now to fix this and this
heavily impacts this crisis when we are talking about VAWA.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much.
Ms. Bryant. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Anyone else want to comment, or do you want to
just go down? Any thoughts you have about the complicated
jurisdictional issues?
Ms. Miles. I just want to speak about VAWA, too. I went to
a conference with a judge of our Tribal court, and she had
wanted me to go hear what the native people were saying. Most
of the Indian women there, my age and older, were really
hopping mad because they wanted to know how this came about,
who wrote it, and had they ever been on a reservation, and they
said, I don't think so. That was really an angry time for a lot
of the native older women.
I think they are the ones that always speak out, too,
because it is really confusing to be stopped by a cop on the
reservation. I was stopped for speeding and it was a Tribal
cop, and I knew him. I saw him grow up and everything. I said,
do you have jurisdiction here or is this a State highway or a
county highway, you know, and he was really irritated with me
because I was pushing his buttons, but that is how confusing it
is. Then the case that I reported in my report, when the
perpetrator was taken to jail, then they are taken to the
Federal court. They are talking about, are we being tried
twice? Indian law on each reservation is different.
I like the remark about the urban Indians with the treaty.
They still retain their treaties because I have been in the Los
Angeles area for a while as well, and I wondered that, too. Do
not I have sovereignty as a Nez Perce Tribal person? We have a
lot of questions that need to be studied.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you.
Ms. Horn. I guess I will speak from criminal jurisdiction
because that is kind of where I am at. In Montana, we have
Tribal, county, State, and Federal. With my niece, Selena, she
was last seen in Billings with a group, and then she left and
she went into Big Horn County, so you have two people. Also
keep in mind that none of these jurisdictions want this case.
Keep that in mind. With our last recent missing person, missing
from our reservation, and if you do not know, there is a thing
called border towns and border counties. He goes over to the
border town, and that is the last place he is seen. Okay. Well,
then every time I went to the Tribal cops and the Tribal
investigator, they blamed the county, and I go to county, I do
not get no answer.
With my niece, Selena, I guess, like I said, there was one
charge, and it went back into Billings. I never did get any
charges, not one charge on the six people who killed her, and
that was put on Big Horn County. I guess, from then on, me and
Big Horn County kind of rubbed elbows and whatever else you
would say because I want to speak up. I want these
jurisdictions clearly laid out, but I do not want jurisdiction
used as an excuse to not do it, which I am seeing in Montana,
which I see even from my own Tribal investigators and police.
Oh, he was in town, and that is it. That was it for them. They
stopped the search. The only people searching on the
reservations was the family.
I guess to use it as an excuse is becoming common, so I
would like these lines drawn a little clearer, and like I said,
I really want my Tribal court to be stronger. We need our court
systems to be stronger. When it comes to county, State, and
Federal, I have to hear, oh, we only take slam dunk cases. Oh,
this judge will only take slam dunk. That is not what I want to
hear, and that is not what I want to relay to a family. I
guess, when it comes to jurisdictions, I watch too much TV,
number one, where people want crime solved. Jurisdiction needs
to be clearly stated, and I would love to see them all work
together because that is what is needed. That is how my niece
was found. She was not found by Big Horn County. She was not
found by Billings. She was not even found by the Crow Tribe
because we had not had any proof she went to the res, but they
offered their services. By us not leaving, Big Horn County was
forced to ask for Operation Lady Justice's help.
This also goes back to a comment I heard earlier about not
knowing about MMIP. In 2018, it was my first niece. Nobody
heard me. When I Googled MMIP, all I got was ribbon skirts from
a newly-formed task force that was just formed. In 2020, I knew
I had to be loud for Selena. I knew I had to do everything I
could. I went to the social media. I went to all the news
outlets, and the local station would not cover us. The Billings
Gazette would not do a story, so about 3, 4 days in, I got
Wyoming News, their news, their radio station that goes all
over. A reporter from the New York Times heard it, so I had the
New York Times at this rest area before I had the local
newspaper. Later that day, when the local newspaper sent out
their reporter, I told her, you tell your editor to copy the
story from the New York Times. At this time, families were
coming to me at the rest area. I pointed to a man that was
missing his daughter in Billings. I said, you go over there and
talk to him. Get his story out because I got my story out. I
got the New York Times. That man standing over there needs the
Billings Gazette. Jurisdiction, it can be a tricky, tricky
game, but I do not like it used as an excuse not to do their
job.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you.
Ms. Echo-Hawk. The maze of jurisdiction has created an
opportunity for predators to utilize it to ensure that they can
move from reservation to reservation, community to community.
We call it res-hopping in the work that I do. I worked with a
family. We found out this individual had moved across five
different reservations, avoiding prosecution as domestic
violence perpetrator because of the maze of jurisdiction that
was not allowing for the arrest and prosecution of a non-Indian
on Tribal land, and in the fifth reservation, he killed her.
The utilization of predators who have identified this
opportunity, because that is what it is, and we have to look at
why was it created.
Why does this maze of jurisdiction maintain itself in a way
that has not only exasperated the issue, but allowed it to
continue in a way that all the statistics that we are all
talking about are going to continue to grow, unless we address
this maze of jurisdiction on our Tribal lands? Cases of
individuals. For example, there was a case in Montana, where
the young woman was placed about 800 feet off of the
reservation, and then they could not decide. You know, she had
been killed on the reservation, but her body was found off the
reservation, so whose jurisdiction was it, and they fought
about jurisdiction instead of investigating the case. We think
that this only applies on the reservations, and I must say that
it is a huge issue, and it must be addressed.
I am working with a family right now who had a loved one
who was beaten and left for dead underneath a bus stop in a
city. Four months later, her family contacts me and my
organization and asks us to help because they had not heard
anything from the police in that jurisdiction, the city police.
When we reach out and we talk to them, they are like, oh, well,
we did not know whose jurisdiction it was because the bus stops
are the county's jurisdiction. If she had been found 6 inches
outside of that bus stop, it would have been the city. The city
is the one who discovered her body and then transported it to
the hospital, where 5 days later, her mother watched her die,
holding her hand. It took them 4 months and a small native non-
profit, working with a Tribe in another State to push them
toward assigning an investigator, who, by then, most of the
evidence was gone, and her death was ruled undetermined because
there was nothing left for them to investigate.
This maze of jurisdiction is an excuse. We published a
report in 2018 looking at urban native women and found that 94
percent of them had been sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
Only 8 percent of those who reported it in those urban
jurisdictions saw the conviction of those that assaulted them
and said they faced victim blaming of what was she drinking,
was she a runaway, all of the things that many women face. This
maze of jurisdiction is rampant and used by predators on the
reservations, and then it is used as an excuse by those in the
urban areas to simply not pay attention to those they do not
care about, and the ones they do not care about look like me
and the rest of these women sitting here today in front of you.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Thank you for asking that question in
terms of jurisdiction. That was one of the issues that I spoke
about in regards to what is happening here in Indian Country.
As I stated earlier at the very beginning, when cases begin,
usually legally, it is where the crime was committed. At least
that is what we are taught. I did go to law school, was a
former prosecutor for 2 years before becoming an elected
official for my nation. That is what we are taught for criminal
cases is where did the crime begin or where was it committed,
but in Indian Country, I think it was said already before, it
is Tribal people. It is Tribal court or it is Tribal people, it
becomes a Tribal issue. They pass that buck around, kind of
just pushing it back and forth. I would like to see our law
enforcement work together and to communicate with each other,
and to communicate with victims and to communicate with
families. The jurisdictional issues have really just become an
excuse, an excuse to not do the job. I really like the
statement made earlier about holding people accountable. Why
are we not doing that, because I think that that is something
that I would like to see.
I grappled with the idea of sharing this story, but I feel
like it needs to be said now. When I was 17 years old, I took a
coke from a man, and I woke up in his shack tied up. I could
not see. I could not see him. I was in his shack for about
maybe 7 to 9 days, tied up. He raped me repeatedly. He beat me.
He broke my ribs, broke my cheekbones. He tried to carve his
initials into my pubic area. I was 17 years old. I had just
graduated from high school. They did not know, because I did
not know where I was being kept, where the shed was located,
they could never identify the jurisdiction, and the man who I
knew, I knew this man. I said his name. They never prosecuted
him. I was 17 years old. The worst part, I think, of this story
is today I represent this man in my community, and this man has
reached out to me on two occasions asking me for help.
Now, you guys are elected officials. You know that we have
a responsibility to the people who have elected us. We have a
responsibility to all of our people. When we are talking about
the jurisdictional issues, I think back because I repressed
that memory for over 20 years. I never talked about it because
I was told you do not talk about those things. I never said
anything. I never shared my story with people. I have gone back
and I have questioned, was it the jurisdictional issue because
I remember they kept asking me, where is this shed located. I
do not know where it was located. I was tied up. I did not know
what was happening. I did not know, you know. I just remember
falling in and out of consciousness. That is all I remember. I
remember the smell of mulch. I remember Red Hot Chili Peppers
being played in the background, which to this day I cannot
stand Red Hot Chili Peppers or the smell of mulch.
I do not know why my case was never prosecuted. I wish I
could say that this was why they never communicated with me.
When I asked for a copy of the police report, they never did. I
was missing for over 7 days and nobody came looking for me.
Nobody asked where I was at. In my community, with my family,
with my parents, they trusted the police. When the police told
them that maybe I just wanted to just get up and just leave,
they believed them. They believed that there was no missing
person. They did not believe that I was taken or that anything
bad was happening to me because they trusted them. In many of
our Indian communities, that is how many of our elders are.
They trust the police because that is what we are taught. That
is what we are told. We are told to trust, to trust the
government, to trust those in leadership who are making
decisions for us.
The question that you asked about jurisdiction, what I can
say is that a lot of cases, they do not ever get to see justice
because nobody wants to work the cases. Everybody wants to say
it belongs to somebody else, or it is their problem, or it is
just a case that just, you get to say that it has been closed.
I think to answer your question, I wish we had law enforcement
where everybody took their job seriously. I wish we had people
who cared. I wish we had people who could ask questions when we
go to them and not make it sound like it is our fault, or that
we wanted to leave, or that our case is not important.
I think that communication is really important, not only
between law enforcement, but communication with the victims and
communication with the families. These jurisdictional issues
with border towns, with counties, with States, with Indian
Country, it is always that question, who has jurisdiction, and
that should not be the question. The question should be, how
can we help and who did this? Let's hold them accountable.
Those should be the questions that we should be asking. Thank
you.
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you so much, and thank you for
sharing that story and so deeply personal. Thank you all. I
mean, I am so sorry that you all have such stories to share
about yourselves or your family members, and I really
appreciate you bringing that to us. In particular, your last
story, thank you for choosing to become an elected official and
to help others and be a lawyer, given your experiences. I am
just so, so sorry that that happened to you and happened to all
of you, so I hope we can all do something today. Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Ellzey.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAKE ELLZEY, MEMBER OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES OF COMMITTEE ON
APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. Ellzey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing. It is evident to everybody how much you care
about this. I would like to thank our panel for being here
today.
Mary Jane, you mentioned something about stoicism. I am
glad you brought that up because no more will I misconstrue
stoicism for self-control. When I look at this panel here
talking about this subject that has been such a problem, a
crisis for your people for so long that it requires self-
control to maintain composure when talking about something that
does not seem to be fought for. As I look in this room, every
time we have hearings like this, the room is full of people who
are in self-control but not stoicism because they feel that
there is no justice for their people, specifically on this
subject, but in others as well, unseen, unheard, uncared for,
and forgotten, but you are not. We all care.
I am honored to be on this committee. I do not have any
Tribes in my district, but we do have 20,000 urban Tribal
members in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I am glad the FCC has
taken a start, but it is time to do better. My family is not
coming to the inauguration on January 20 because I don't know
what is going to happen. The reason I told them I do not want
to come to inauguration is I don't know what is going to
happen, and I am going to be in warrior mode. Twenty years in
the Navy, my colleague here, twenty years in the Navy. I know I
will be in warrior mode that day, more interested in protecting
my family than watching inauguration. I said, I can't be a good
daddy, husband, and host if I am in warrior mode.
What we need now is across all Tribal lands, and, Mary
Jane, when you mentioned that the reservation system has taken
the provider mission of your men away from you, this should be
their mission. This should be our mission, and their mission is
warrior mode to protect your people. We need to get rid of the
cross-jurisdictional problems. If we only have 218 on 27,000,
they need to be volunteering and getting in warrior mode so
that you have 600, 700, 800, to where people cannot come onto
the res where evil goes, where there is no prevention of crime.
Evil will go and predators will survive, and evil must be
fought.
I want to see men of all types standing up and volunteering
to be warriors for your people, and until we can get the
notification system fixed, that is job one. Let's get this
notification system fixed along with tracking capabilities,
along with air support, 27,000 miles. We need to have air
support for you so that we can track down people who are
missing. We got people in the air, so we can be looking for
these folks. Training for law enforcement, Tribal lands wide,
hiring those cops and volunteers, and then fixing the cross-
deputization.
We need guys to get in warrior mode everywhere. The
attention at this committee, subcommittee, and in lame duck
session, where there is really not a whole lot going on, I want
to work with my fellow warriors on this committee to make sure
that this problem comes to an end. I have asked my staff to put
20 of the most recent missing women and children on a poster,
which we will make available to whomever wants it. If you don't
know about these problems, and it is not in the media, it is
not on the national news, it is not anywhere, you don't know it
exists, but we do now. Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Justice should be served soon, and I look forward to working
with my fellow warriors, men and women, on this committee to
help make that happen. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Congressman Ellzey.
Ms. McCollum.
STATEMENT OF BETTY McCOLLUM, MEMBER OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES OF COMMITTEE ON
APPROPRIATIONS
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would like to
thank you and Ranking Member Pingree for doing this. Chairman
Cole has left. We both serve on the Defense Committee, and Ms.
Hawk, I have not been happy--Ms. Echo-Hawk, excuse me. Your
whole name deserves to be said. I am not happy with the way the
Department of Defense has been handling sexual assault cases,
and so you have just given more fuel to my fire, so thank you
for pointing that out. I know Chairman Cole, who is on the
committee with me, heard you loud and clear, as well as
Chairman Calvert, who is the chair right now, was also a chair
member of this committee where we worked non-partisanly on
Tribal affairs.
I want to just take a second to lead up and paint a
question to all of you, but to you in particular, Ms. Echo-
Hawk. Minnesota has been working very hard to lead on efforts
on this. This is a crisis that I have been aware of since the
1970's, since I was a child. People did talk about it quietly
between the Tribal nations in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I was
very fortunate to have Tribal friends, as well as my
grandmother trading, as she like to put it, with Tribal women
and hearing their stories.
Our lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, a member of the
White Earth Band, has been an advocate in 2019, along with
Senator Mary Kunesh, who is in my constituency, the first
indigenous woman elected to the Minnesota Senate. They chair
the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force, which
delivered a report to the State legislature highlighting some
of the same heartbreaking, infuriating statistics that our
witnesses shared today, and I will not break down Minnesota's
numbers. One is too many, period.
The report resulted in the development of a permanent
office in the State for missing and murdered indigenous
relatives, but even with the focus of the crisis in Minnesota,
and by the way, Minnesota's paying for this. We are not getting
money from the Federal Government to do this. This is our
legacy, this is our wrong, and this is something we are working
together as one Minnesota with Governor Walz and leadership. We
are looking for permanent solutions, and that is the same thing
that the chairman and the ranking member are asking from all of
us again today.
Jurisdiction comes up over and over and over again, and
here is one of our challenges with jurisdiction for what you
have touched upon in your report, thank you, the report from
Navajo Nation. Your funding is spread across all over. We have
some funding that we can put into what we do for Tribal
nations, primarily healthcare and education, but some other
things in here, too, but you also have funding in the committee
that oversees the Justice Department. You have funding in
housing. We need more funding for families in crisis, whether
it is domestic violence or just housing in general to reduce
some of the stress that Tribal nations and their communities
are facing. Even transportation. We have heard over and over
again about how many miles of bad roads we have. Some of that
is in our jurisdiction, but some of it is in the Department of
Transportation's system.
One of the things that I have been working on since I got
to Congress, and we have been making improvements, but I think
you could help us make improvements even faster with your
voices. We need a whole-of-Indian-Country document for your
budget so a Tribal nation knows this portion is from here, this
portion is from here, that portion is from there, so we can
knit it together, including just broadband and better
communications, which is in, believe it or not, the Ag bill,
which the two of us have worked on a little bit. How do you
stitch anything whole-of-government when your funding is spread
out all over? I think we can be of help to paint a better
picture with that, but we need you also to put the pressure
that has been put on the Bush administration, the Obama
administration, the Trump administration, the Biden
administration, now the Trump administration again. We make
headwinds with OMB, but we are not where we need to be for you
yet, and it would be so helpful for us as well.
Then there is the other jurisdiction. I am a border State,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Tribally-enrolled members going
back and forth, urban, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth. We know
that there are problems, we are working on it, but there are
also problems with jurisdiction with the Coast Guard with women
who are trafficked and abused out of Lake Superior. I know the
same thing is happening out of Lake Michigan as well, too, so
we need to open up this jurisdiction and think big when we are
talking about it, including the Coast Guard and then working
with Canada, the provinces, and the First Nations. You know,
someone goes back and forth between International Falls into
Canada, Fort Frances. They are traveling all the time. We
cannot let jurisdiction be a barrier. I thank you for you
pointing this out.
I want to take this down a slightly different track because
I want to get this right when we do do this. I am going to take
a second and just read a little history. I am a social studies
teacher. Our territorial Governor, Ramsey, he served as the
mayor of St. Paul. He did a lot of really nasty things. He even
served up here in the House. When he came to Minnesota, he was
in his position of Governor and superintendent of affairs in
1891. He played a key role in obtaining Dakota leaders. I live
on the land of the Dakota people, and he did a lot of things,
but he also led to a conflict in 1862. A group of Dakota,
hungry, with what they were entitled to locked up, provisions
not being put out by Governor Ramsey, led to what we call the
Sioux Uprising, and the Sioux were right to uprise. Minnesota
has the largest history of hanging Native Americans after that
uprising. One of the things that came out of all of that was
the term ``redskin'' and bounties placed on redskins.
I have worked with Tribal leaders and allies for a long
time about eliminating the term ``red,'' so when I heard you
refer to code red, I thought, I wonder what my Tribes would
think about that. I am not asking for a big discussion on that
right now, but that is the connotation it even has for me as a
non-Native American to use that and to hear that term in
Minnesota. We need to do something to kind of separate things
out, but I would hope that Members of Congress would reflect on
your choices and your wishes for what we call that. It needs to
be universal so that when you go from State to State in my 5-
State area--Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, even into
Canada--that people know what that means when that goes on. We
do need that because it will not only, I believe, hopefully
save lives, but it will also bring constant attention to what
is happening.
To my sisters who testified today, my sisters in the
audience, my sisters here and our great allies, thank you for
today. This is personal for me for some of the reasons some of
you shared. It is also personal for me because I have a very
close family member who has worked and chosen--we laugh about
her taking a vow of poverty--to work with domestic violence
victims. To your point, you need to take care of yourself
because I stress this person needs to take care of herself. She
was so frustrated with jurisdictional things happening, she
decided to move into the court system and work with families.
You are not alone, but there is so much work to be done
[Speaking native language].
Ms. Echo-Hawk. Thank you so much for those comments and
especially in the naming convention, which is one of the
recommendations that we have made to the FCC, is that any time
you are making an effort in Indian Country, appropriate Tribal
consultation is needed, which is why the Red Alert, which is
making reference to the red hand over individuals' faces, is
appropriate in the State of Washington, the Feather Alert was
appropriate in the State of California, but what does that look
like at the national level? The only way we will be able to
determine that is through Tribal consultation that has begun,
but needs to be, again, continued out because an alert system
like this has the ability to do what we have not been able to
do, and that is touch both the reservations, the urban areas,
the rural areas, and offer an opportunity to ensure that our
loved ones have visibility when they go missing. The naming
convention is very important and must be done in Tribal
consultation to meet all of the needs, exactly what you just
stated. Thank you.
Ms. McCollum. Mr. Chair, I will have to excuse myself for a
Defense meeting shortly. I have staff here, and I am going to
watch you on, you know, the YouTube channel, so thank you.
Ms. Horn. Can I say just something really quickly? In terms
of what you asked for, I guess, like, all of the weaving of
funds that we do receive, what I can tell you is that I have
been keeping close watch on the Department of Interior's
funding when it comes to public safety and justice. We know
that in the last budget year, the U.S. Department of Interior
received $14.8 billion. Two-point-four-six billion went to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is where our public safety and
justice within Indian Country falls under that particular line
item. There are 164 self-determination Tribes and 33 locations
where Office of Justice Services is located. That $555.56
million gets divided into criminal investigations and police
services, detention and corrections, inspection, internal
affairs, law enforcement, Indian police academy, Tribal justice
support, law enforcement program management, facility
operations and maintenance, and then to Tribal courts.
What we can do is what we have been advocating for, is to
look at the sectorial amount that is actually within the law.
It is the base funding that is determined for Public Safety and
Justice within Indian Country, and it is something that we have
been advocating for. If Chairman Cole was still here, he would
probably be shaking his head because we have had many
conversations with him to ask how do we change that sectorial
amount which will allow us to change the amount that we receive
in Indian Country for public safety and justice.
That is just for the Department of Interior, the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. That is not including Indian Health Services.
That is not including the U.S. Department of Justice. That is
not including any other agencies out there. I keep close watch
on this because as chairwoman for Law and Order Committee, our
funding comes out of the BIA funding, and there is concern
right now with the new administration coming in and the
proposal to get rid of a lot of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
or, I guess, across the board, a lot of employees within
different agencies. If Department of Interior Bureau of Indian
Affairs were to receive less money, that would be less money
for public safety and justice across Indian Country. I ask all
of you here to speak up for the Department of Interior, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Office of Justice Services, and I
ask that those funds stay where they are at or that it
increases so that we can address public safety and justice in
Indian Country. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Edwards.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK EDWARDS, MEMBER OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES OF COMMITTEE ON
APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. Edwards. Wow, there is a lot to talk about. First of
all, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate you bringing this
hearing to the forefront and helping us all better understand
the issue. Like you, a year ago, it wasn't an issue nearly to
the degree that I now understand. It is just out of my circles
and not recognized within the folks that I interact with, so
thank you for bringing it to the forefront. To all of you,
thank you very much for taking the time to be here and for
being brave and sharing your stories. I know that is very
difficult. I could hear the difficulty in the tone and all of
your voices at some point, and I believe that all the Tribal
nations are extremely fortunate that they have folks like you
willing to advocate on the behalf of Indian Tribes everywhere.
The issue of jurisdiction has come up a number of times. I
am kind of a simple thinker, and I have been scratching my head
through this wondering why that is such a complicated topic. I
have got a couple of ideas I will be sharing with my staff to
see how we can resolve that very easily. Another thing that
might not be as simple, and I can't read your nametag. I am
sorry.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Eugenia Charles-Newton.
Mr. Edwards. Yeah. Eugenia leaned over to me and was
sharing some data and as well put together a document during
some of the testimony and pointing out the number of cases that
have not been prosecuted. I will just be curious on a couple of
things from any of you that might have a perspective. What are
some of the reasons that you are aware that cases might not be
prosecuted, and who would be responsible for that? I know in
the State of North Carolina, we have elected prosecutors that
we would hold accountable if they were not to do their job. Is
it something similar in all Tribal nations? Is it different
from nation to nation? What efforts are being made locally
inside of your Tribal nations to spotlight those folks that
refuse for whatever reason to prosecute the folks that are
committing these crimes? It is a lot to unpack there, but any
perspective that you have got to help us understand would be
useful.
Mr. Simpson. Go ahead, Eugenia.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Thank you so much for asking that
question, Congressman Edwards. I really appreciate it. In North
Carolina, actually, you do have some Tribes within North
Carolina that are State recognized, so I think that you
probably do have many American Indians that you do represent.
You just don't know it, but you will. Within the booklet----
Mr. Edwards. They are right back there in the corner. I
know where they are.
Ms. Charles-Newton [continuing]. Chairman, on page 23,
Navajo did put together our data and statistics, and, again, I
am very much about numbers. I like to see numbers, and I like
to be able to take a look at those numbers and cross them out
or lower those numbers. That is one of my duties as an elected
official. I can say for Navajo, from 2016 to 2024, we had 525
cases that were declined for Federal prosecution. In terms of
understanding the jurisdictional issues within Indian Country,
if the crimes are committed on reservations, on federally
recognized Tribal nations, those get prosecuted at the Federal
level, unless they are Public Law 280. Then State does have
jurisdiction in those cases to prosecute, but many times many
of our cases go unprosecuted as is the case here with the
Navajo Nation.
To answer your question, within the booklet, you will see
that 172 cases were declined, and those cases dealt with child
sexual assault or abuse. A hundred sixteen was assault, which
also included aggravated assault, I guess, resulting in serious
bodily injury with a deadly or dangerous weapon. The reasons
for declination, and this is according to the United States
Attorney's Office, there were 182 cases--sorry, my glasses are
getting a little bit dirty here--182 of those cases were
declined for insufficient evidence or lack of evidence. In that
time, the U.S. Attorney's Office failed in many cases to inform
our law enforcement of the lack of evidence. Two hundred and
five of those cases, they were declined for insufficiently
confidence in likelihood of convictions.
What we are seeing within Indian Country and the U.S.
Attorney's Office is that Indian Country is turning into a
stepping stone. Many attorneys do go to the U.S. Department of
Justice. They do start off there in Indian Country. They like
to see their likelihood of convictions, the numbers at a higher
rate so that they can get a better job somewhere else, and so
many of our cases get pleaded out without any communication
with families. That is within the booklet that we did provide,
and this is just for Navajo Nation. Every Tribe does get
letters for cases that are not prosecuted, and we have, again,
just barely started collecting this information. Right now, it
is being collected in a booklet because we do not have the
infrastructure in place, but all of that information is within
the booklet, and that is how I can answer on behalf of Navajo.
Thank you, Congressman Edwards, for asking that question.
Ms. Echo-Hawk. In the urban communities, we have seen no
accountability at all. We are simply a population that people
do not know exists in their cities, that they do not realize
that the declining a prosecution and the victim blaming, if
that happens, that allows for excuses. For example, the story I
told, a woman who was beaten, left under a bus stop and died 5
days later, there would have been no accountability for even
starting an investigation unless her Tribe had not reached out
to a friend of a friend who knew me. This cannot depend on one
person. This cannot depend on one organization. It must be a
systematic approach that upholds accountability. The one report
we have that I said again, that of those that reported their
assaults, only 8 percent of them saw a conviction, and there is
no accountability as to why is there not resources dedicated,
why isn't this paid attention to.
We do know the stereotypes that have existed in this
country, going from, you know, Pocahontas, who was a trafficked
woman who died in captivity, is what this country thinks about
native people that has helped buildup these stereotypes. Then
in instances where people are suffering as a result of the
trauma they have experienced and they treat their wounds
through alcohol, through opiates, through behaviors that may
have them living on the streets, that additional stigma
attaches to them, and we see absolutely no accountability for
it. It is something that we have been calling for, and no one
has been willing to take up the cause to say all law
enforcement, regardless of where they reside, are responsible
for the public safety of everybody in their communities, and
that absolutely includes the first people of this land,
American Indian/Alaska Natives and the indigenous people of
this land and territories.
Ms. Horn. I guess I have named 15 people. Selena got a
misdemeanor charge against her perpetrators, and Kaysera, her
family is still fighting. She went missing before Selena, and
so when Selena went missing, they told me Selena is number
twenty-eight in Big Horn County that is missing. Twenty-eight.
You know what I said? I don't believe that. I think there are
more. There are more mothers sitting at their table waiting for
the sheriff to come up and update them. Out of those 15 I
named, they come from different jurisdictions--State, Tribal,
Federal. Kaysera's family was recently returned her jawbone.
The Big Horn County returned a jawbone to her when they
illegally cremated her. Where did that jawbone sit for all
these years? Whose desk? Whose drawer? Who had a jawbone that
it pops up all these years later? This family has to go through
it again. You get a jawbone back. What is that going to do to
you? That is going to tear you up. They had to go through it
all again because somebody found her jawbone. I cannot fathom
that at all.
Out of those 15 people, you got one misdemeanor,
endangering the welfare of a child. Selena has got six.
Kaysera's got one. Kaimani has got a group. Casey is unknown.
Freeman was his wife. Kaz was a group. Thomasine was her
boyfriend. Preston was a cop. Claiborne was a cop. All of these
people are known in our communities, and nobody has been held
accountable, so it goes back to trauma. We are going to go re-
trauma everybody. We are trauma-ing our children right now
because our court systems are trauma-ing their parents, their
grandparents. It is a trickle effect when they tell us what not
to do.
My granddaughters, we do not even let them go in the store
alone. My daughter in California, she messages me, ``I am
scared in California.'' I cannot help her. I am in Montana, and
I empower her. That is all I can do is empower her, tell them
you have this. You have the strength in you. You know, you are
important. You are needed. You matter. Just jurisdiction,
again, is an excuse, and it is hard to explain that to a
family.
Ms. Miles. I had never thought of that as being an excuse.
Thank you. I just want to go back to VAWA. When I first was
introduced to VAWA, the judges I traveled with, I was asking
questions like the other old ladies were asking, too. The
question I had asked was, well, what happened to this case
where they took a young girl from the. Well, she was legal to
get into the only bar we have under reservation. A couple of
white men came and took her in a van, took her off the
reservation, kept her for a week and raped her repeatedly,
bullied her, and now she is in a State that is pitiful. What
happened? They went to the State penitentiary. Why? It was off
the reservation. They should be in a Federal prison. I feel
that we need to look at the laws on the reservation and work
with the Tribal people. It is going to be a long haul, but I
just sometimes think I do not even know. Like, I told a story
about the little Tribal police chasing me. You know, I do not
even know who has jurisdiction. I am 84 years old and I should
know, but I don't. That is a big biggie that needs to be worked
on.
Ms. Bryant. I think a lot of good, reasonable people would
look at this and think there is a baseline for justice, there
is a baseline that people are human beings and deserve full
treatment under the law no matter who they are, where they come
from, and that is not our reality. I think Abigail did a
beautiful job talking about these specific examples of where
this traumatic history has led some of our people. They fall
through the cracks, and nobody cares enough to pick them back
up in any sense, you know, besides our communities, especially
in the justice system. I think back to a few weeks ago when
President Biden apologized to our Tribal nations for the United
States' boarding school policy. That is not ancient history. I
am 40 years old, and that is a generation or two above me. This
is not a long, long time ago. It was policy for the U.S.
Government to come into our communities, take children as young
as 2 or 3, take them away to these schools, away from their
families, abuse them for speaking their language or honoring
their culture. It is horrific what we have been through.
As we sort through that and we are also losing people in
these ghastly crimes, that is a lot for us to shoulder, as you
have heard today. You know, we are sharing this with each other
today as much as we are sharing it with you. We are spreading
our burden out right now, and it is a beautiful thing. When we
think about these things are terrible, how can this be going
on, it begs the question to look deeper into why these crimes
happen in the first place and why nobody knows about it, and it
is so much more than laws and jurisdiction. It is where we have
been sort of placed in society, in our indigenous homelands in
a country that we are serving to protect even before we had the
right to vote. We love this place, and we need it to love us
back.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you all. This is kind of unusual in that
we generally do not have hearings in November during the lame
duck, as you said, but this is obviously a vitally important
issue to all of us. We want to work with you to make sure that
we can address it, and it brings up many questions, and, you
know, only some of them were funding.
I keep hearing the jurisdictional issue. I will tell you
that first time I was chairman of this committee, I bought a
book, and it was the ``Rights of Tribes and Indians.'' It was
about this thick. You go through it and it talks about the
different things. I understood how PL 280 Tribes came about and
all this kind of stuff, and then you get to the chapter on law
enforcement. I have probably read it 7 or 8 times and still
don't know what the hell it says. Then you realize that every
Tribe is different. It is like having the same issues in Boise,
Idaho as you have in Shelley, Idaho. Those two communities are
substantially different. One is 250,000 and one is 1,000, you
know, so their needs are different, and that is the same with
Tribes. We should not have to figure out whose jurisdiction
this is if someone is missing or whatever, you know.
You brought up an interesting question or an interesting
thought, Abigail. When I am sitting here listening to this, and
I am going just because we put more money into Tribal justice,
that does not mean it is going to help Tribal members in urban
areas because that is going to go to the reservations and their
Tribal systems most likely. We need to re-examine this, and as
Ms. McCollum said, we need a whole-of-Indian-Country approach,
and that is more than what this committee can do. What we can
do is focus attention on it, and when we do our appropriation
bills, concentrate on it and work with the authorizing
committees to see how we need to address this, to fix this. As
I said in my opening statement, this is just unacceptable, and
we have a responsibility. You know, forget the treaty
responsibility, we have a moral responsibility as human beings,
so we are going to keep working on this.
I sincerely want to thank all of you for coming and sharing
your stories with us today. As Tom said, personal stories make
things real, but I want to get to the Agency people and talk to
them about what is going on and what thoughts they might have,
how we might improve this system. Thank you all.
Ms. Echo-Hawk. Can I just say one thing? I just want to
clarify, when it comes to serving the urban population, we want
to ensure that we never touch any Tribal carveout dollars that
have been put aside to ensure the public health and safety of
our communities. It needs to be more.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah.
Ms. Echo-Hawk. We cannot forget those of us who live in the
urban areas and that we are Tribal people regardless of where
we live. Increase those Tribal dollars and also be sure that
you are considering the urban populations. Thank you.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Chairman Simpson, can I also say that
crime and the failure to prosecute cases does not stop during
lame duck, so the work should not stop just because we are in
lame duck.
Mr. Simpson. Absolutely.
Ms. Charles-Newton. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. You bet.
Ms. Miles. I just want to say, too, that usually the urban
Indians were relocated via a government relocation program.
That is how my family got to Los Angeles. It was the government
that sent us there.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you all. Our second panel is the
Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bryan
Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs and a
citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community; Richard Glen
Melville, the deputy bureau director, Office of Justice
Services and member of the Makah Tribe of Washington;
Department of Health and Human Services, Patrice Kunesh, the
commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans at the
Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services and of Standing Rock Lakota
descent; and from the Department of Justice, Daron Carreiro,
the acting director of the Office of Tribal Justice at the
Department of Justice and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw
Nation. Bryan, you are first.
STATEMENT OF BRYAN NEWLAND, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INDIAN
AFFAIRS AND CITIZEN OF THE BAY MILLS INDIAN COMMUNITY (OJIBWE)
Mr. Newland. You bet, yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
Ranking Member Pingree. [Speaking native language]. Good
afternoon. I am glad to be with you today. My name is Bryan
Newland. I have the privilege of serving as Assistant Secretary
and have had this privilege for the last 4 years now under
Secretary Haaland's leadership and President Biden.
Mr. Chairman, before I go any further, I just want to thank
you and the Ranking Member for the way you have structured this
committee. As you know, typically those of us coming from the
agencies appear first and oftentimes will scurry out of the
room, and I appreciate you putting the community members and
the Tribal leaders first. Those are the people we serve and on
every issue, but especially this issue, we should be hearing
from them and following their lead, so thank you for
structuring it this way.
The United States has a trust relationship with each of the
574 federally recognized Tribes, and that means we have a trust
responsibility to protect the existence of Indian Tribes and
Indian people, no matter where those Indian people are found,
on the reservation or in urban communities. The Department and
the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) play crucial roles in
upholding this responsibility through our interagency work in
coordination with Tribes. For decades, native communities have
struggled with disproportionately high rates of assault,
abduction, and murder of Tribal members, and American-Indian
and Alaska-Native women make up an overwhelming portion of
those who are missing and those who have been murdered, as we
have already heard here today. This shameful fact is a legacy
of Federal policies of forced removal and forced assimilation,
and today, structural problems prevent Tribes and Federal
agencies from effectively addressing this crisis.
Our most recent report mandated by the Tribal Law and Order
Act estimates that the total cost of public safety and justice
programs in Indian Country to be more than $3 billion. However,
today we only fund 13 percent of the total amount needed for
adequate public safety and justice in Indian Country. In
addition to a lack of funding, there is a complex patchwork of
laws that we have heard about today that makes it more
difficult for law enforcement officers and judges to do their
jobs in Indian Country. Criminal jurisdiction over a crime or
investigation in Indian Country can shift based upon the Tribal
status of the victim, the offender, as well as the ownership
status of the land where it occurs. In some cases, different
offenders could be prosecuted in different jurisdictions for
the same event.
Congress passed Public Law 280 in 1953 when it was in the
process of terminating the existence of Indian Tribes. That law
places criminal jurisdiction over crimes in Indian Country with
State and local prosecutors. For decades, that law has been
used by courts to diminish rather than strengthen the ability
of Tribes to control public safety on their lands. Cases like
Oliphant and Castro-Huerta have eroded Tribal sovereignty and
made it more difficult to carry out police work on Tribal lands
and in Tribal communities. In recent years, Congress has
commissioned a number of studies and reports to examine the
MMIW crisis and public safety challenges in Indian Country, and
those reports have consistently affirmed that the work of
keeping people safe in Indian Country is unnecessarily complex
and unnecessarily expensive and that we don't invest enough
funding to do that work.
We know what must be done. We have to invest more in more
Tribal officers in Tribal communities, better and safer jails,
Tribal court systems, and Tribal wellness programs. We also
have to strengthen the ability of Tribes, not States or Federal
agencies, to lead efforts to keep their own communities safe by
affirming their criminal jurisdiction over crimes on their
lands, and we have to ensure that Federal agencies have the
resources needed to support Tribes in States and coordinating
investigations that cross over reservation boundaries. Just as
importantly, we have to support families and communities and
victims in these communities in both preventing and healing
from these crimes.
In the past several years, we have attempted to do that by
establishing the Missing and Murdered Unit at the BIA to
address this crisis. We have increased the number of Tribes
participating in the Tiwahe Initiative, which helps support
Tribal programs addressing these challenges at the local level.
We have worked to increase pay rates for BIA law enforcement
officers so that they are paid on a similar scale to their
counterparts in other Federal agencies at the department. We
have proposed additional funding for Tribal law enforcement,
Tribal courts, wellness courts, and jails, even constructing
two new BIA jails for the first time in more than a decade. We
have also worked with Members of Congress to support
legislation like the BADGES Act, which would speed up our
ability to hire more officers at the BIA, and we have also
supported the Parity and Tribal Law Enforcement Act, which
would improve the ability of Tribes to recruit and retain
police officers.
As someone who lives in Indian Country, and who has led
Tribal and Federal law enforcement agencies, and who has served
as the chief judge of a Tribal court, I am grateful to see the
bipartisan commitment in addressing these challenges. In these
past several years, I have enjoyed working with Members of
Congress in both houses and from both parties to try to make
Indian Country safer, and going forward, I am sure that our
dedicated team at the Bureau of Indian Affairs will continue to
work with you, Mr. Chairman, and other Members of Congress, to
make life better for Indian people. I want to thank you again
for the opportunity to appear before the committee today, and I
will look forward to answering any questions you have. Thanks,
Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Newland follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Bryan.
Patrice.
STATEMENT OF PATRICE KUNESH,MISSIONER OF THE ADMINISTRATION FOR
NATIVE AMERICANS, AT THE ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND
FAMILIES IN THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE
Ms. Kunesh. Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and
distinguished members of the committee [Speaking native
language.], and thank you for the opportunity to testify on
behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. My name
is Patrice Kunesh. I am the Commissioner of the Administration
for Native Americans. I am also the Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Native American Affairs in the Administration for Children
and Families, and I serve as the Chair of the HHS
Intradepartmental Council on Native American Affairs.
My grandfather was born in 1902 on the Fort Berthold
Reservation in North Dakota, and he grew up in Fort Yates on
the Standing Rock Reservation. Like most native families at the
time, his also was impacted by painful separations due to
boarding schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial
School. At the time he was born, Native Americans were not
considered U.S. citizens. It feels remarkable to me that his
granddaughter is now leading a Federal agency whose sole
mission is to support the social and economic development of
native people and promote Tribal governance and the
revitalization of their languages and cultures.
HHS has been tackling public safety issues in Indian
Country head-on for some time, particularly missing, murdered
indigenous people and human trafficking, and we are deeply
engaged in providing health and human services in every native
community. Our full spectrum of integrated and culturally
appropriate care is focused on prevention, intervention, and
healing. For example, my Agency, ANA, provides significant
grant funding to Tribes and native organizations that support
trauma-informed services to victims of violence and culturally
grounded programs such as native languages, Tribal capacity
building, as well as workforce training. Even broader work is
being done throughout HHS to address consequences of violence
in Indian Country, much of which is highlighted in the
recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission or NIAC,
which lays out a whole-of-government response to the public
safety crises in Indian Country. I was honored to be one of the
three NIAC commissioners for HHS and was part of the drafting
team for the report and recommendations. I also spearheaded a
separate HHS response to the NIAC report to put our actions and
our intentions on the record.
The Indian Health Service provides critically necessary
services in this area of trauma-informed care and ensures
healthcare providers receive culturally appropriate training,
education, and technical assistance to become specialists in
examining the incidences of sexual assault. ACF's work on
preventing violence and human trafficking and supporting
victims and survivors is centered around our Missing Murdered
Indigenous Action Plan and is incorporated into all of our
programs and services. Our Office on Trafficking in Persons
supports and leads systems that prevent trafficking and protect
survivors, and help them rebuild their lives and become self-
sufficient through programs such as the Victims of Human
Trafficking in Native Communities Demonstration Program and the
Look Beneath the Surface Campaign. For 40 years, the Family
Violence Prevention and Services Administration has provided
Tribal grants to help deliver programs that prevent violence of
all kind and provide immediate shelter and supportive services.
Our Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative, overseen by
our Children's Bureau, is just one of many programs and
resources to address MMIP and human trafficking prevention
needs of native communities.
It has been a privilege for ACF to partner with Department
of Interior (DOI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) on the Idian
Child Welfare Act (ICWA) Interagency Workgroup as well to
collaborate around data collection and services to Native
children and families. Importantly, ACF also funds four or five
hotlines that collectively offer assistance and services to
those impacted by MMIP and survivors of human trafficking. The
President's Fiscal Year 2025 budget offers a historic
opportunity for HHS to enhance how we support health and human
service delivery to native children, native families, and
native communities across the country, and also reflects our
nation-to-nation commitment to Tribes. Thank you for this
opportunity to address the health, welfare, and safety of our
Native peoples throughout the United States. [Speaking native
language].
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kunesh follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Patrice.
Mr. Carreiro.
STATEMENT OF DARON CARREIRO, ACTING DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF
TRIBAL JUSTICE (OTJ) AT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND ENROLLED
MEMBER OF THE CHICKASAW NATION
Mr. Carreiro. Good afternoon, Chairman Simpson, Ranking
Member Pingree, members of the committee. My name is Daron
Carreiro. I am currently serving as DOJ's acting director of
the Office of Tribal Justice. Thank you all for the invitation
to speak here today. It was also an honor to see Chairman Cole
here today. I want to express the Department's gratitude for
the ongoing work of this committee to address issues like
public safety, MMIP, Indian healthcare, which I know was
mentioned earlier. There are so many others that are at the
core of our solemn responsibility to uphold Federal trust and
treaty obligations to Tribal Nations, so we are appreciative
for that.
MMIP, in particular, is not an issue that can be resolved
by one agency or one department, so we are especially grateful
for our partnerships. That includes partnerships with Tribal
nations, Members of Congress, Federal colleagues who are here
with me at the table, State and local governments, as well as
the advocates that appeared on Panel 1 today. I will say I have
worked with a few of them in other capacities throughout my
career. I have a tremendous amount of respect for them and
their testimony. I guess I will also say of the names that were
mentioned, these are heartbreaking cases. I want to assure you,
we are familiar with them, and in some cases I know the
families personally. My own family has been a part of the
outreach. We take the testimony very seriously and it is
meaningful.
Testifying on behalf of DOJ today, our work to address MMIP
now, it builds on this tremendous work that was done under
Operation Lady Justice, so I was glad to hear that mentioned
today. It really laid the foundation for so much of our ongoing
efforts, and I want to thank the members of the committee who
were a part of that as well as the other legislative efforts
that we have discussed. I do want to highlight the Department's
recent successes, progress to address MMIP and other public
safety issues, acknowledging, of course, that there is far more
to be done. First, I want to highlight some of the operational
work from key components like the U.S. Attorney's Offices and
FBI, and second, I will describe some of our recent grant-
making efforts that strengthen Tribal law enforcement systems
and Tribal courts and Tribal public safety efforts.
Starting with our own operational work, one of our key
components in this effort are the United States attorney's
offices, and there are 51 around the country that have some
type of Indian Country jurisdiction. These are the Federal
prosecutors responsible for prosecuting violent crime, child
abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, and other Indian
Country crimes. To briefly highlight some initiatives in this
area, as was mentioned, the Department established its MMIP
Regional Outreach Program last year. This program takes five
MMIP regional coordinators as well as five assistant U.S.
attorneys, places them in five regions around the country, and
their exclusive mission is to work on MMIP issues, and they do
it in three areas. One is the casework, but the other is
outreach to communities, and the other is training, which is a
real pillar of their work. This year, they have had successes
in each of the areas, so I hope we get a chance to talk about
that today. They work closely with Tribal leaders and Tribal
State, local law enforcement, as well as BIA's Missing and
Murdered Unit.
Our U.S. attorney's offices also house the Tribal special
assistant U.S. attorneys, Tribal SAUSAs. These are actually
Tribal prosecutors, Tribal employees that we cross-designate in
Federal court, and they are right there on the front end to
help with Federal prosecution efforts, but they are also
empowered to prosecute cases in Federal court or in Tribal
court. Consistent with the recommendations of the Not Invisible
Act Commission, we have sought to expand the designation of
Tribal SAUSAs, encouraging U.S. attorney's offices to integrate
them into regular operations, assisting Tribes to leverage DOJ
grant funding to hire more Tribal SAUSA positions, and there
are currently 23 Tribal SAUSAs in eight districts around the
country doing that work.
On the operational side, that is some of the work out of
the U.S. attorney's offices. Because of time, my written
testimony submitted today on behalf of the Department includes
additional details about other efforts from FBI, DEA, ATF, the
Marshals Service. I do want to highlight one initiative in
particular, though, because it is important and shows the
collaborative effort, which is FBI's Operation Not Forgotten.
For 3 months this summer, the FBI pulled resources from all
over the Nation and surged them into Indian Country through the
Operation Not Forgotten to work unresolved cases, the types of
cases we are talking about. It deployed 51 FBI personnel that
included 47 agents, and for the first time ever, this surge was
a joint operation with Interior's Missing and Murdered Unit. In
just those 3 months, that surge team tackled 300
investigations, led to the over 40 arrests, 11 indictments, and
the identification and recovery of nine child victims. In
addition, and another important role that we play, is that over
400 victims and next-of-kin impacted by this crisis and by
these cases were provided support service by FBI victim
specialists. That is some of our ongoing operational work.
Just a final word on the important role that DOJ plays in
providing funding to Tribal Nation's own law enforcement and
public safety and justice programs. Whereas BIA is responsible
for base funding, for basic law enforcement, DOJ provides
supplemental funding through our COPS Office, our Office on
Violence Against Women (OVW), and our Office of Justice
Programs. Together, these offices awarded $210 million to
Tribes in October of this year. That is nearly a quarter of a
billion dollars awarded last month for law enforcement
officers, equipment, Tribal courts, Tribal SAUSAs, like we
mentioned, victim services, including a new Healing and
Response Team initiative, as well as other new efforts that are
directly responsive to the Not Invisible Act Commission's
recommendations. We are committed to finding ways to improve
our funding, and we are doing that administratively, and we
meet with Tribes regularly on how to do that. We are also
engaged in formal consultation with Tribes on what legislative
changes could be made to make our grant programs work better.
Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, thank you again
for the opportunity to be here. I will say working an entire
lifetime for Tribes, including my own and others, and now in
Federal service to Indian Country, I have sort of always waited
and hoped for the day that an appropriator might say, what can
we do, and it would be an honor to answer that question should
we get to it today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carreiro follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, and thank you all for being here,
and thank you. As was mentioned, we usually have administration
officials testify first, but thank you for sitting and
listening to the testimony of these five women. Usually, we
have a clock, you know. We did not put that out today. These
are stories that need to be told, and one of my main focuses is
somehow the American people got to know about this.
I spoke to the Boise Chamber of Commerce last month, and I
said to them that we were going to hold a hearing on this. I
said, do you know that we lose close to 6,000 Native Americans
every year that are in the murdered and missing persons
category, and you could see people kind of going, they have
never heard that before. Somehow we have got to educate the
public that this is an issue, and I am disgusted that our news
media does not ever seem to pick up on this. It is like it is
not an important story.
I know you all oftentimes get the blame and the finger
pointed because it is like I tell my Forest Service friends
that work in the Forest Service, everybody out there that lives
in Idaho could do a better job of managing our forests than the
Forest Service because we are all armchair quarterbacks. I know
you get fingers pointed at you all the time. That is not what
we are here about. Nobody wants to solve this problem more than
you all do.
I am going to ask a question, and it is not a fair one
because you are all members of Tribes, and you are all members
of the Administration also. If I could make you king for a day
or queen in your case, what would you do? What is the one or
two things you might do to make this work better? You all heard
the testimony of the jurisdictional issues, which just baffles
me how that works and the confusion that that causes. As they
said, you know, we sit and argue about who has jurisdiction
over this for, you know, 2 weeks and then it is done. What
would you do to change this? I realize that appropriation
funding is part of the problem, but it is not all of the
problem, so tell us what you would do. I will start with you.
Mr. Carreiro. Thank you, Chairman, and I know you said one
or two. I may do four, with your permission.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. That is fine.
Mr. Carreiro. The first one, and this one is going to sound
really odd coming from a Department of Justice official, but
number one is more base funding for the Department of the
Interior, and I feel comfortable saying that because I have
heard Attorney General Garland say it to Tribal leaders. When
we have traveled around the country and met with Tribal leaders
about DOJ public safety and justice, the first issue that comes
up is base funding at the Department of the Interior.
Mr. Simpson. I will make sure that Mr. Cole hears that.
Mr. Carreiro. Secondly, though, the Department of Justice
funding is incredibly important. I know I talked a lot about
operations and could do that for a long time, but our grant
funding is incredibly important for Tribal Nations. Our COPS
Program are what funds law enforcement officers. It funds
equipment. OJP is incredibly important. Our Office on Violence
Against Women is funding Tribal court systems. It is
strengthening capacity to exercise special Tribal criminal
jurisdiction. It is funding Tribal SAUSAs. A lot of the
Savanna's Act work was increasing uses of our funding, so now
you can, like, get money from the Federal Government to do your
MMIP reporting through OVW, and we have two programs that allow
for that. The new Healing and Response Team initiative. They
came up with $2 million to dedicate to the Minnesota Indian
Women's Sexual Assault Coalition to deliver this trauma-
informed healing for Tribal communities. We have a request for
$10 million that they be able to continue to do that work
around the country, so that is on the DOJ funding side.
There are legislative changes that aren't just dollar
amounts that we are looking at. We have three proposals in
particular that we are consulting with Tribes on. We are doing
that this week, in fact, but two specific to DOJ is a lot of
our grants are competitive. Thanks to Congress, we have been
able to do the Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Fund as a
formula, really effective. We have been asked to do it for
other programs, too, and that is something that we could use
Congress' help in doing. Related to that is a PL-477-like
program, which has been so effective among 12 agencies for
pooling together job training and labor and employment costs to
put in grants from all over the country for a Tribe, put them
in one fund and let them use it. We have heard from Tribes the
desire to do that in the public safety and justice space, too,
and we are consulting on what that might look like and what
range of services.
I will close up quickly because you did say jurisdiction.
Some of the jurisdictional gaps Congress has been really
effective at closing, I am thinking of the Duro fix. When we
strip Tribes of jurisdiction to exercise a certain type of
criminal jurisdiction, Congress restored it. The Violence
Against Women Act, of course, has been making great strides. I
love the reference to Maine today because that was really
powerful for those Tribes that have been dealing with that gap
in their own. I think there are members of this committee who
are working on or may have introduced bills aimed at getting at
the non-Indian drug traffickers in Indian Country and being
able to subpoena social media, which the DEA tells us is the
superhighway of drug traffickers, but Tribes cannot go after
them right now. Finally, just on the recruitment and retention
component, DOJ really supports the BADGES Act as well as the
Parity Act.
Mr. Simpson. I appreciate that, and you are absolutely
right. I was on the city council in Blackfoot, and that is the
Northern side of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, Fort Hall
Reservation, and Pocatello was on the Southern border of it.
When I was on the city council, we used to love to hire Tribal
officers from the reservation because they had the same
training as our State police do, you know, so that was the
training ground for both Pocatello and Blackfoot. It is hard to
keep these officers, not only police officers and so forth, but
fire department officials. It is hard to keep them on the
reservation because they can, you know, drive 12 miles and get
twice the pay and benefits and everything. That is something
that we have got to work on. I do not know yet how to address
it, but it is something that we have got to work on. I know
there are people in Congress working on it. Okay. You are queen
for a day.
Ms. Kunesh. As queen for the day and cognizant that this is
a committee that oversees Indian Health Service, I would also
like to expand it to a broader context of HHS. First, I would
like to highlight that violence is and will remain a healthcare
issue and that healthcare and human services go together, so
that is why we need this collaboration with HHS, IHS, and so
forth. Secondly, I think what we have heard from this amazing,
astounding first panel of our sisters and aunties and
grandmothers is that we need to mend the wounds, we need to
heal the trauma, and we need to prevent the violence and take
the steps to intervene in these horrible human trafficking
issues.
One of the things that I think is really going well and I
think is really worth additional investment is the Forensic
Nurse Examiner Program out of Indian Health Service. IHS sees
thousands and thousands of patients, clients, you know, every
year, urban, Tribal, and so forth, but the majority of these
patients are not given a safety screening. What we have been
able to do, and IHS is changing that practice particularly
around hiring forensic nurse examiners. This is really an
amazing program where not just safety screenings, but they are
also taking on forensic investigation of sexual assault, of
trauma, of all sorts of violence and also homicide. Amazingly,
they have been able to invest a total of $10 million over 5
years. It is distributed to 16 sites, and they are going to be
doing this more medical forensic services related to these
community-based programs. It is not us doing those services. It
is those services being done in the community.
One thing we know for sure is that long-term sustainable
work and successful work is done in the community. One thing
that I wanted to highlight as well is that IHS has contracted
with the Texas A&M Center for Excellence in Nursing for a
specialized educational program for patient care across all
sorts of violent crimes, and, again, these services are
available to Indian Tribal and urban healthcare facilities as
well. It is really worth the investment and support of those
services. In the President's budget for 2025, we have asked for
$15 million for domestic violence programs and services, and
that is just not prevention of violence. Again, it is the care
and support for victims and their families, and you can see and
hear from the first panel that the sphere of trauma extends out
to families and siblings and communities. We also know that
opioid use disorder is a scourge in every native community, and
it affects violence, but it also affects behavioral and mental
health concerns as well. We have asked for $21 million to
support opioid use disorder. Something that is not often talked
about is maternal child healthcare, and we know when mothers
and children are doing well, the families can do well, so we
have asked for $7 million in maternal child healthcare.
Second or third, data. We have heard a lot about data, and
we know that oftentimes our data does not talk to each other.
From DOJ to DOI to HHS, a really solid good example of data
coming out of HHS is from the Center for Disease Control. We
heard about that a little bit earlier, and their National
Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey really provides
some very robust data, but we also need to connect it to the
community. We also need to connect it to native communities,
and we need to really understand the impact so we can design
policies and prevention and intervene, to really get a handle
on the violence. My own Agency, the Administration for Children
and Families, has Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and
Reporting System (AFCARS), and this is child welfare, child
well-being. This really tracks Indian child welfare cases. So
much trauma and disruption and harm, we have heard about family
separations, can really be addressed by examining the AFCARS
data and, again, sharing it across our agencies.
Finally, we have our Office of Trafficking in Persons and
our violence prevention services that are looking at human
trafficking, and we need to look at human trafficking from a
native lens. There is not good data on this. There is not
reliable sources on this to really understand the magnitude. We
know it is there, and we know it is very, very, very serious.
Then finally, I will give a plug for my Agency, the
Administration for Native Americans, because what we do is
support native languages in a big, big way, and we know that
when native people know their language, they build identity,
they build resiliency. Resiliency is healing. We have asked for
$66 million, which is a $5 million increase, not a substantial
amount, but it really supports the core, you know, native
identity and who we are connected to the land, to the people,
and to each other. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Thank you for that. I can tell you how
important preserving these Native languages are. I have been to
a couple of the schools and watched them in their immersion
program, and you can see in these kids' eyes, this is not like
going to school to them. This is, like, learning their history.
It is fantastic. If we ever let these native languages die,
shame on us.
Ms. Kunesh. It is shame.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah.
Ms. Kunesh. Just give another plug. Learning native
languages as a child is brain development.
Mr. Simpson. Absolutely.
Ms. Kunesh. It is resiliency as much as identity, and it
has such long-lasting impacts.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah.
Ms. Kunesh. Yeah. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Bryan.
Mr. Newland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, Director
Melville is a career civil servant. I do not want to taint his
reputation by association with me, but, Mr. Chairman and
Ranking Member, in appropriations, if I am king for a day, you
are looking where can we spend money that is going to get us
the most bang for our buck here, and I will give you two, one
place to spend your money and one way to make it go further.
The first way to make it go further is to put Tribes in the
driver's seat of addressing this problem in their communities.
Because of laws like Public Law 280, and because of cases like
Castro-Huerta and Oliphant, Tribes don't get to set the public
safety agenda within their own lands the way that a city does
or a county or State. Mr. Chairman, if you were and I were in
downtown Boise and got into a tussle, not that I would be eager
for that, we have an idea of which police agency would show up
and where we would get prosecuted. In Indian Country, if that
happened, the sheriff might show up and you might get
prosecuted in the county. For me, the Tribal police could show
up, and I could be prosecuted in the Tribal court or
potentially a Federal court, and it forces police officers on
the scene to play lawyer.
It raises the cost of police work in Indian Country, and it
takes these policymaking decisions out of the hands of the
Tribal government officials. Reducing that complexity makes it
cheaper to do police work in Indian Country, and it lets the
people closest to the problem solve the problem. On that point,
we have 574 federally recognized Tribes in the country. Because
of these complex laws, we only fund law enforcement for 200 of
them, so fewer than half of the Tribes in the country are
having the Federal Government even attempt to meet its trust
obligation to provide for public safety.
The second area would be to provide more funding, as Daron
said, to us at the Department of the Interior for these public
safety places. If you are looking for a place to start, you
know, the Tribal Law and Order Act lays out the three broad
areas where we are underfunding Indian Country. Tribal courts
would be a good place to start that. Our latest report says the
estimated need is $1.5 billion, and we are presently funding
Tribal courts at $81 million, and that increasing the capacity
there will then translate. When we increase the funding for
police and fix these jurisdictional issues, they will have
judges and courts in place that are capable of resolving these
cases, so that would be a good place to start. Those are two
things I would, if I were king for a day, I would tackle right
away, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Well, thank you for those suggestions. I can
tell you, and I still see that attitude. While it is going
away, it is still there. When I was a kid growing up, most of
the Fort Hall students came to Blackfoot to go to school, to
middle school and high school. A lot of them was friends,
played football with them and all of that type of thing, so I
got to know them pretty good, and then I worked out on the
reservation for a farmer and all that kind of stuff as I was
growing up. The word around town--I will not say it was a
spoken word, it was just everybody knew it--is that Tribal
courts, man, do not go to Tribal courts because you are a white
guy and they are going to throw you in jail or whatever, I
mean, and they were seen as very unsophisticated and all of
that type of thing.
That is changing as they have advanced law enforcement and
also the Tribal court system. As one of the witnesses said
today, she would like to see her Tribal court get better than
what it is, and that is something we need to continually
improve on. When the general public has more confidence in the
Tribal courts, I think you will see a lot of that change, but
they ought to be able to do their own jurisdiction of what the
issues are. I fully agree with you. It is this whole issue of
jurisdiction, I do not know what to do about it, and I am not
egotistical enough to think I have the answer to it. We need
all of your input on how do we do that, how do we change that
because that is going to be a big job, and make it so that it
works for the future, and so that it makes it work for Tribes,
so that we address some issues that we are talking about today.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for
the work that you have been doing and for your testimony today.
Really appreciate you being here, and it is a sort of a great
followup to the what do we do next. Maybe I will just start
with the next stage of that question on jurisdiction since you
sort of brought it up. In light of the current court cases,
which I think are a little baffling and make it even more
confusing, are you thinking about potential sort of a law that
Congress could craft that made this more clear? If so, exactly
how would that look?
Mr. Newland. Thank you, Ranking Members. I used to teach
Indian law. I am going to try to not subject you to my old
Indian law class.
Ms. Pingree. Well, he has read the entire book, so I think
projected him.
Mr. Newland. I will just use Public Law 280 as an example.
You know, that law was passed as part of a national agenda to
terminate Tribes, and we are beyond that now. In fact, we are
in the opposite policy, that law is still on the books, and it
not only affects the Tribes that come under that law, but we
have seen over and over in the last 70 years, courts point to
that law to make judicial rulings to erode Tribal sovereignty,
and we saw that again in Castro-Huerta just a couple of years
ago.
We have the ability to allow Tribes to reclaim their
criminal jurisdiction in some cases, and we have done this in
Washington State a few times where we have retroceded
jurisdiction back to Tribes, making that process easier and
increasing its availability to Tribes and also clarifying that
Public Law 280 should not be interpreted to further diminish
Tribal jurisdiction beyond what is in the plain text of the
law. Those are areas I think, where, again, you can get a lot
of bang for your buck with little legislating. I think what I
am hearing here is there is a lot of support for clarifying
this.
Ms. Pingree. When it comes to the, you know, the paltry
number of Tribes where we actually fund law enforcement, is
that just based on the limited amount of funding? That 13
percent figure is really appalling to me, but is that about the
dollar amount or are there certain Tribes where there is a
reason we are not also supplying funding?
Mr. Newland. Thank you, Ranking Member. That is a great
question. With laws like Public Law 280, and there are so many
Tribes that fall under that, and with our limited funding, we
look to the States because that is what Public Law 280 says in
those areas to be the first responders and have the criminal
jurisdiction. We cannot because we do not have enough funding
as it is to even meet our obligations with the non-PL 280
Tribes. We cannot extend it to those Tribes in PL 280 States,
and that is how we get into this situation.
Ms. Pingree. Thanks. I could ask you so many more
questions, but I do really appreciate the work that you are
doing there, and I know the focus needs to be on the resources,
but thank you for the current work that you are doing.
Ms. Patrice--I will not try ``Kunesh,'' yeah, again--thank
you for your testimony and the work that you are doing. I
really appreciate, not only based on some of the testimony that
we heard today, but your approach to understanding that it is
just a healing process, healing for all of the wrongs that we
have heard discussed that have gone on for hundreds of years,
but then also how families are treated and the victims and
women themselves. I was really fascinated by the Forensic
Nursing Program you were talking about, and that seems like one
of those places where not a huge investment is making a big
difference, and how could we expand that. Many of the programs
that we often hear about that are great, we will hear this is
being done in four Tribes or in three communities, or what
would it take to make sure that that was an essential part of
all Indian health, and that level of support and trauma-
informed care is there for everyone?
Ms. Kunesh. It would be awesome to have this integrated
throughout. We are out there in 16 sites right now, but at the
very basic level, having support in the community immediately,
notwithstanding the law enforcement jurisdiction and
authorities surrounding the situation to have this scientific
medical investigation capacity along with trauma-informed care,
is just to have that immediate opportunity for services and
investigation together would just be pretty phenomenal because
I know that the IHS is really working through this forensic
nursing team to identify areas also where it can expand and
support and closely collaborate in a lot of other areas as
well.
One of the things we have heard about is workforce
capacity, and this is a good way to get in a medical forensic
examiner--that was recommended by the NIAC report--that can do
double, triple duty, and they are there to do sexual assault.
They are there to receive and do ongoing training and support
and coordinate services. I think there is, as I think Bryan
said, a good bang for the buck in investing in forensic nursing
throughout native communities. They are the first line and they
are often overwhelmed, and the caseloads are just so intense as
well, but we also use this work through multidisciplinary
teams. We also do this work through community crisis response
teams, so it is really, truly community based.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you for that, and thank you, Mr.
Carreiro, for the work that you are doing and your history and
working with this. You talked about so many important things
that the Justice Department does, and, of course, this
jurisdictional issue also is one that you are challenged by. I
thought it was interesting when one of the witnesses today did
mention Operation Lady Justice and how sometimes that surging,
and you talked about some of that happening this summer as well
with the FBI. Can you talk a little bit more?
I mean, one of the things that she mentioned was it
actually seemed to have made a difference in that particular
case in Montana, but then her comment was I have actually never
heard about them at any other case that I have ever heard
about. Now, that is just anecdotal in one region of the
country, but knowing that there is limited capacity in so many
places, is that the kind of thing that we should be expanding
more so, the idea of a team or a trained team that comes in
very quickly and collects the evidence and does so many of
these things that we hear about are not there when the time
comes to try to get a conviction. Just elaborate more on that
kind of idea.
Mr. Carreiro. Yes, thank you for the question. I think it
is not just a combination of the surge of agents, but, really,
the teamwork and task forces, and that is sort of part of the
answer to the jurisdictional question, too. It is not all of
them, but because the crisis we have heard around urban
communities, FBI's criminal jurisdiction, unless it is some
other Federal crime, but it is Indian Country jurisdiction is
on those reservation lands and so often lack jurisdiction, but
teaming up in a task force setting.
We are running 26 FBI-led Safe Trails Task Force which team
with BIA law enforcement, also State and local. We have now
assigned DEA agents to each of those just to the connection
between fentanyl and human trafficking and all the
vulnerabilities that lead to MMIP. We are sending DEA agents as
liaisons too. We are accepting BIA agents on our task forces.
There is CLEX, which are law enforcement commissioning, so
federally commissioning Tribal law enforcement. Not to take
credit for that, that is a BIA program. We do the training on
it, though, and so we are training, I think, something like 500
officers a year for BIA's program.
I think it is not just the surging and part of the
successive operation, not forgotten this year, and they ran it
for last summer too, slightly fewer staff. The results not as
high, but also not partnered with Missing and Murdered Unit
(MMU). The collaboration with BIA with Tribal law enforcement.
I mean, really, the State and local law enforcement were often,
they are the ones that have the jurisdiction to prosecute these
cases is incredibly important.
Ms. Pingree. That is great. Well, thank you for that. Thank
you, Mr. Chair..
Mr. Ellzey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for
being here. This is an incredible day for all of us.
Commissioner Kunesh, let's say today you are the Secretary of
the Department of Indigenous Affairs, and you are also an
attorney and----
Mr. Simpson. Is that all? I made her queen for the day.
Mr. Ellzey. Did you? I was out. I am sorry. Sorry for the
demotion. You have the ability to craft a bill, the cross-
deputization, the who has got what. You have 30 seconds to
answer. How do we craft that bill, in English, not lawyer.
Ms. Kunesh. Cross-deputization is really a marvel when it
works really well and there is trust and there is respect
between the different jurisdictions. It exists out there. What
a bill would take, what would a bill do would focus on the
shared training, the shared responsibility, the shared roles in
terms of the protection, safety, prosecution, and support for
justice services, I think it needs to be as explicit as that
that everyone----
Mr. Ellzey. Can it be simplified in a page?
Ms. Kunesh. [continuing]. I think it could be, and I know
Bryan is a fellow law professor, put our heads together. I
think so.
Mr. Ellzey. Okay. For whomever wants to answer, the Navajo
Nation put out a booklet on their requirements, and they are
27,000 square miles, 218 police when they need 600, and failing
jails. It seems from 30,000 feet, not living there, that that
should be a simple fix on what three of their jurisdictions do
not have any law enforcement facility whatsoever. How is that?
What can we do? What can they do? Public-private partners,
Congress, Tribe, how do we fix that? This is probably going to
one of you three. Glen has been notoriously silent today, so I
do not know, so in no particular order, how do we fix it?
Mr. Newland. Thank you, Congressman. I will try to speak,
not speak lawyer, and just say that the council delegate from
Navajo Nation mentioned a term called secretarial amount, which
is when they take the BIA funding for law enforcement, that is
the amount we determine that we give them. It is the cost that
we would spend if we were doing it ourselves from the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. We are not allowed to look at Navajo Nation and
say we are under funding you by X percent so we are going to
take it from another Tribe that is also getting that funding.
The only way we can increase our funding to meet those needs is
to lift the funding overall because the way that the Indian
Self-Determination Act works is we cannot reduce one Tribe's
funding to increase another Tribe's funding, and so that is a
good law. I am not advocating for changing it, no. The only
tool available for us to get them more money is to have
Congress appropriate more money overall.
Mr. Ellzey. Okay. It needs to be more like a block grant
for new buildings and then they decide where it needs to be.
Those were atrocious, 1970-built jails, 50-year-old facilities,
that should be a rounding error for us to be able to
accomplish. Okay. Yesterday, I was with Bruce Westerman. The
Committee on Natural Resources held a wonderful hearing similar
to this, and we were talking about 1 year to get background
checks completed. Even if you wanted to hire your own home-
based police, 1 year on the background checks, whoever is doing
that needs to be fired. That is unconscionable. If I can go in
cold in Texas and go purchase a weapon, and in less than 3
days, and in fact, online, I have got a mixed check, and they
know my history, how on earth does it take a year? That is
unconscionable, and it is certainly hurting your ability to do
your jobs.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD ``GLEN'' MELVILLE, DEPUTY BUREAU DIRECTOR,
OFFICE OF JUSTICE SERVICES AND MEMBER OF MAKAH TRIBE OF
WASHINGTON
Mr. Melville. Thank you, Congressman and Mr. Chairman, for
having me here today. Background investigations are extremely
difficult, especially in Indian Country because under 25 CFR,
all Tribal law enforcement officers are supposed to have
background investigation that is equal to a Federal agent, and
so OPM has put out that level of security that we need. We in
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, we have both top secret and
secret background clearances, so those Tribal agencies are
getting them at that as well.
For the Tribes, we have actually been able to do a little
bit better. I have in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of
Justice Services a background investigation unit that the
Tribes can submit their backgrounds to, and we have agents that
go out and do the exact same job that OPM does through their
contractor. Now, that does not take a year. That takes weeks.
The big holdup on the background investigations is through OPM
and their contractor, through the Department of Defense,
because we are all-of-government, and all-of-government goes to
OPM for their background investigations, so it is not really
prioritized. It goes on to a stack of, Okay, these need to be
done. We will get to them when we get to them, so we do not
really have control over a government contractor for another
government agency to get our background investigations done.
We have supported the BADGES Act, where it is a pilot
project where I would be able to do background investigations
on my own agents that I am bringing in under OJS through our
background investigation unit, and just like the FBI does. The
FBI does their own, DEA does their own, everybody else has to
go through OPM, but I believe our people can do as good a job
as any and get that and turn that time around in weeks instead
of months.
Mr. Ellzey. Okay. That is something we could work on and
must be done. Let's say for the Navajo Nation, is there a line
of folks on the res that are willing to serve, and then cannot
because----
Mr. Melville. Unfortunately, not. Law enforcement is not a
very popular career to go into nowadays. It has been
villainized, it has been demonized, and not a lot of people are
looking up to law enforcement and going for law enforcement
careers. Many other things are glamorized. You get more people
want to be, do we call them, social media influencers. That is
how old I am. I do not even know what that is, but more people
are more interested in that than going into law enforcement.
When you talk about working on Indian reservation, which is
even a smaller segment of people, and when you want Indian
preference, that is an even smaller segment of people that are
willing to go out there and do the job. Finding those people is
one of my main jobs, is trying to recruit and develop those
people to help bring law enforcement services to Indian
reservations.
We have instituted a youth program. It is the Youth Indian
Police Academy that we hold in conjunction with the Bureau of
Indian Education out of the Riverside Indian School. It is a 2-
week indoctrination for kids across the Nation, ages 14 to 18.
They go through 2 weeks, they hang out with our investigators,
our police officers, our detention officers. We bring in other
Federal agencies, Tribal agencies, we even invite the
firefighters because we are trying to help out, get every
service that we can involved. It has been very successful, and
we are going to continue doing that so we can engage in the
youth and see if we keep people interested in law enforcement
again.
[Mr. Melville's Bio follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ellzey. [continuing]. Okay. There are 200,000 folks on
the Navajo reservation, and assuming that it is half men, and
then of that pool, there are 30,000 who are age and physical
capable, we cannot get enough recruits. That is we got to turn
that around somehow. Finally, based on the discussion we have
had today on sexual assault amongst indigenous women. Is there
a rape kit availability problem, coupled with law enforcement,
coupled with medical clinic problems, where there is not enough
available or not being processed?
Ms. Kunesh. I do not know the answer to that specific
question on rape kits, but we do know from the Forensic Nurse
Examiner Program that this is an intensive, extensive need to
have someone in the community to do that kind of forensic
medical examination of sexual assault that supports the
investigation and any other services, but I don't know about
the rape kit situation.
Mr. Ellzey. Is there a cultural impediment to it to or a
shame aspect to indigenous women reporting rape, either people
from outside the res or within?
Ms. Kunesh. We have found in several of our survey
instruments that there is a significant underreporting for many
different reasons, shame or intimidation or what have you. We
know from the human trafficking perspective, also, that it is
woefully underreported, so the numbers that we do report
probably are not accurately reflecting the true magnitude of
the problems.
Mr. Ellzey. Is there a sense that if they report, it is not
going to be prosecuted anyway or investigated?
Ms. Kunesh. Yes, there is a sense of futility. We heard
that from our witnesses in the first panel as well.
Mr. Ellzey. Okay.
Ms. Kunesh. That is part of it.
Mr. Ellzey. Thank you all for your time. I yield back.
Mr. Simpson. Let me just followup on that. In comparison to
the white population, is it underreported, I mean, because it
is underreported in the white population also. I mean, there is
a sense of I do not want to deal with it and all that kind of
stuff. Is it different in Indian Country?
Ms. Kunesh. I think it is, and I would invite my fellow
panel members to answer that as well. Something we heard from
earlier is, you are native, you do not matter, and you are not
treated well, and even if you do report it hoping to get
investigation and justice, it is not going to go anywhere. I
think it is this, the Not Invisible Act. We do not want to be
invisible anymore, and these are the things we need to do to
make ourselves heard and seen and these situations addressed
properly.
Mr. Simpson. Thanks for bringing up the issue of getting
security clearances. Also, I will tell you just a short, brief
story. When I became chairman of the Energy and Water
Subcommittee, Angie became the clerk from it, and she had been
the water person on staff. She had to get a security clearance,
had to get a Q clearance because we deal with the National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and a few things, year
and a half. I was about ready to set my hair on fire. It is
nuts how long that takes. Anyway, Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to followup
real quick on my friend, Representative Ellzey's, question on
rape kits. I can't help but think that after hearing the
testimony from the previous panel, particularly from the
standpoint that there are so many crimes that are not
prosecuted because there is a lack of evidence, that maybe you
should know the answer to rape kit availability. That seems
quite obvious to me, having dealt with this issue in North
Carolina, and we should all know the answer to rape kit
availability. That is the cornerstone of the evidence that
would be needed for prosecution in so many cases. Mr. Newland,
I think that you made a point a while ago that really, to me,
encompasses the crux of the problem here, and that is when you
said that we should put Tribes in the driver's seat for
investigating and prosecuting the crimes, and that really was
the pretense of a question I asked the previous panel. It seems
to me like it would be in the best interest, and nobody would
be more motivated in investigating and prosecuting these types
of crimes than the Tribes who are affected most by such
criminal acts.
We have heard lots of folks names mentioned here to today.
I would like to put a face to a name, and that is the lady over
my left shoulder here.
Mr. Edwards. This is Cheyenne Toineeta of the Wolftown
Community of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Reservation that was
murdered in Nashville, Tennessee 3 days before Christmas in
2015. She was found on the ground in front of a friend's house.
After her friend helped her inside, Cheyenne said that her ribs
hurt and then she became unresponsive. Police reports suggest
that she may have been injured during an altercation with a man
just days before her death, and it was determined that she died
of blunt force trauma to her torso. The police have
investigated her death as a homicide, and as we near Christmas
this year, almost 9 years later, her murder has not been
solved. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians stepped in to
offer a $20,000 reward for any person that provides information
that leads to an arrest and conviction of Cheyenne's death. The
family of Cheyenne Toineeta, including her three daughters, are
still mourning her loss. They have had difficulty in getting
information about the investigation from local police, and it
was not until Cheyenne's aunt, Brenda Toineeta, pipe stemmed
justice on the Cherokee Supreme Court, contacted former Senator
Bill Frist of Tennessee for help, and communication at that
point improved. Cheyenne is recognized as one of 23 missing and
murdered indigenous women among the Eastern Band of Cherokee
Indians.
In connecting this face and this crime to your statement
earlier, my question is, how might we go about putting Tribes
in charge of or in the driver's seat of investigating and
prosecuting such cases that are alleged to be off of Tribal
boundaries?
Mr. Newland. Thank you, Congressman, and thank you also for
advocating for your constituents and telling the stories of the
actual people who are harmed by this. By affirming Tribal
jurisdiction and the ability of Tribes to take control over
public safety on their own reservations, what that does is it
frees up the ability of the Department of Justice, BIA's
missing and murdered unit, to coordinate with other agencies
off the reservation for these cases that cross over Tribal and
sometimes State boundaries because what we have right now in
places where there is clear Federal jurisdiction is we have
U.S. attorneys, you know, effectively serving as local
prosecutors and the investigation team said that support that,
you know, doing local police work, and it takes away from their
ability to handle these cases. This is another area where by
putting the local stuff in the hands of the local government,
in this case, the Tribes, like we would anywhere else, will
then allow the Federal Government to do what it is really good
at and what its real mission is, which is to coordinate these
complex cases that go across reservation and State boundaries.
Mr. Simpson. Do you have anything else? Again, I want to
thank you all for being here today. The one thing that, I guess
not the one thing, there are a bunch of things, but the thing
that kind of puzzles me here demonstrates the problem that we
have in Indian Country, is that it is obvious that criminals,
drug cartels, those kind of things are going to look at places
where they are safest from being arrested or being caught.
We have a lot of America that is rural. It is not on
reservations, just, I mean, rural Idaho or rural Montana or
stuff. You find the problem on reservations because they know
they do not have the same law enforcement on there, that they
are less likely to get caught on the reservation than they are
if they committed in Camas County, Idaho because there you are
going to have private feds, the State police, the local county,
everything else, and this jurisdiction issue has got to be
solved. If I get arrested on the reservation for whatever, for
speeding, I do not know where my responsibility is. Do I go to
the Tribal court to pay my fine, or do I go to, you know, and
right now that is even confusing.
I thank you all for being here. Thank you for being here
for the entire testimony of the brave woman that came and
testified before. We will be looking to you because I am sure
we have spurred ideas among our members that about how to
address this and we will be looking to you for ideas and to
tell us whether these ideas make sense of things that come up.
I suspect you are going to see a lot of different thoughts on
this over the next year or so.
Thank you all for being here today, and this is a subject
that is not going away till we fix it. Thank you all. The
committee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:36 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Questions and answers submitted for the record follows:]
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W I T N E S S E S
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Page
Bryant, Maulian.................................................. 41
Carreiro, Daron.................................................. 96
Charles-Newton, Eugenia.......................................... 7
Echo-Hawk, Abigail............................................... 14
Horn, Cheryl..................................................... 32
Kunesh, Patrice.................................................. 79
Melville, Richard ``Glen''....................................... 115
Miles, Mary Jane................................................. 38
Newland, Bryan................................................... 67
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