Events happening this Sunday, which is National Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, will commemorate and raise awareness about the crisis of thousands of unsolved missing and murdered Indigenous individuals.
The U.S. Department of Indian Affairs estimates that there are about 4,200 cases of unsolved missing and murdered Native individuals in the U.S. Although the strides the state and federal government have made in recent years to address the issue have helped, the crisis remains, Deiandra Reed, land and body violence coordinator for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, told NM Political Report.
An event held by the Coalition to mark the day will take place from 10:30 a.m to 1 p.m. Sunday at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Reed said the event will include a shawl ceremony, a drummer and singer performing and families speaking about their ordeal of losing a loved one. The event will include a press conference with the media so that families of missing and murdered Indigenous people can share their stories publicly.
Reed said being able to share those stories with the public helps the families.
She said she has friends who met with obstacles with local police to file missing person reports when their family members went missing. She said that when those friends were able to talk to the media about their cases, the local police allowed those families to file reports.
Reed said the experience she witnessed first hand is not uncommon for Native families. She said oftentimes local police departments won’t allow an Indigenous family member to file a report on a missing person. Due to jurisdictional issues, the local police will frequently say the report has to be filed on the reservation, even if the missing person wasn’t living on the reservation at the time of their disappearance, Reed said.
Reed said another issue that is hard for Indigenous families to overcome is that some police won’t take a missing person report seriously because the person who has gone missing suffers from a substance abuse disorder and has had trouble with the law in the past.
“They say, ‘we know how your sister is,’” Reed said. “I feel like a lot of the law enforcement are really doing more harm than good. They’re revictimizing families. And they say things to the families that hurts their feelings even though if a family member is suffering addiction, it doesn’t mean they don’t matter.”
Some efforts that have been made in recent years to address the issue are long overdue, Reed said. She said Indigenous people have gone missing and been murdered since early colonial times.
The state enacted a memorial in 2019 to create a task force to consider the problem and create a list of recommendations. Last year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham met with criticism when her office disbanded the task force, although a spokesperson for her office later apologized, New Mexico In Depth reported.
This year, the state enacted a joint memorial to create a new task force that would gather under the aegis of the New Mexico Department of Justice, formerly known as the Attorney General’s office. Lauren Rodriguez, director of communications for the NMDOJ, told NM Political Report that the office is “currently in the process of identifying task force members.”
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced last summer that it would bring new resources toward the crisis in the form of placing more attorneys and coordinators in various regions, including New Mexico.
The Not Invisible Act, sponsored by former U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, who represented New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District and now serves as Secretary of the Interior, became law in 2019. It is intended to increase coordination to identify and combat violent crime against Native people and within Tribal land.
Reed said the coalition and a few other groups have also received government funding to distribute to families who need resources to help with outreach for things such as producing fliers to alert the public about a missing relative. The funds can also help with travel costs when searching or conducting outreach to try to locate a missing relative.
Reed said the efforts have helped raise awareness but the issue is deeply ingrained in the roots of colonialism.
“Before colonialism a lot of the tribes were matriarchal. When the colonizers came, they didn’t recognize women as equal. That’s when the missing and murdered crisis actually got started, a lot of people believe,” Reed said.
She said other aspects of colonialism that led to genocidal policies include the forced relocation of Native children into boarding schools, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced Native people off their historical land and onto reservations, extermination policies established by the U.S. government and forced sterilization of Native women that occurred as recently as the 1970s.
Reed said she believes that alcohol and substance abuse disorders are also the result of colonial genocide of Native people. She said the extreme poverty also hurts Native families. She said there are areas in the Navajo Nation where families lack electricity or running water.
Reed said that for families to be able to speak publicly about their trauma of losing a loved one can have a positive emotional impact.
“It’s important because a lot of families don’t get recognition. They feel ignored by law enforcement. Just to be able to speak about a loved one, to let the public know what they’re dealing with, validates them and lets them know there are people who care,” Reed said.
