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Indigenous women victimized at higher rates
Nora Mabie, Dianne Lugo
and Derek Catron
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
LAME DEER, Mont. — When a police
officer walked into the Cheyenne Depot,
a convenience store on the Northern
Cheyenne Reservation in southeast
Montana, Malinda Harris Limberhand
knew this was her chance.
It was July 4, 2013, and Malinda
hadn’t heard from her 21-year-old
daughter, Hanna Harris, since she’d left
to watch fireworks the previous night.
Malinda babied her “Hanna Bear” or
“Hanna Banana,” but her youngest
daughter was now a mother herself. Her
son, Jeremiah, was 10 months old, and
wasn’t taking his bottle. He was hungry,
and Malinda was worried. It wasn’t like
Hanna not to come home to breastfeed
him.
Leaving the counter where she
worked, Malinda approached the Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs officer. “My
daughter is missing,” she said. “When
can I file a report?”
She said the officer told her she’d
have to wait 72 hours.
Malinda didn’t know at that time the
officer was wrong. And she didn’t know
then that thousands of Indigenous
women go missing and are murdered at
disproportionately high rates compared
with other ethnic groups. The FBI’s Na-
tional Crime Information Center report-
ed 5,203 missing Indigenous females in
2021, disappearing at a rate equal to
more than two and a half times their es-
timated share of the U.S. population.
The real rate is likely higher; the total
was deemed an undercount in an Octo-
ber report to Congress because of a lack
of comprehensive federal data.
In Oregon, the first official report on
missing and murdered Indigenous peo-
ple was released by the Oregon U.S At-
torney’s Office in February 2021. The re-
port listed 11 missing and eight mur-
dered Indigenous people connected to
the state.
Eleven of the 19 were women: Lisa
Pearl Briseno, last seen in Portland in
1997. Heather Leann Cameron, last seen
in 2012 outside of Redding, Ca. Shaydin
Jones-Hoisington, missing since 2018.
Leona Sharon Kinsey, last seen in La
Grande in 1999. Sennia Pacheco, last
seen in Pendleton in 2020. Leslie Ship-
pentower’s body was found Oct. 1, 1986
in the Umatilla River. Selena Shippen-
tower’s body was found Dec. 19, 2004
alongside Lynette Watchman’s body.
Sophia Rosenda Strong’s remains were
discovered July 4, 2019. The murder of
Melissa Wilson remains unresolved
since July 4, 1985.
And on Feb. 8, 2021, Tina Vel Spino’s
remains were identified on the Warm
Springs reservation. She had been miss-
ing since July 2020.
But it’s unclear how complete that re-
port is. Oregon State Police reported a
count of 13 missing Indigenous women
and three murdered men in September.
The National Crime Information Center
database reported nine missing Indige-
nous people and three murdered men.
The National Missing and Unidentified
Persons Systems only tracks missing
persons and unidentified or unclaimed
remains. According to that database,
there were eight missing Indigenous
people in December 2020.
The inconsistencies point to the lack
of comprehensive data on missing or
murdered Indigenous women in the
state and nationwide.
Nobody knows how many missing or
murdered Indigenous women there are,
but it’s enough to have its own acronym:
MMIW. Enough for President Joe Biden
to describe it as an “epidemic,” and for
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to
label it a crisis while calling for more
federal action.
Enough for a Native woman to take to
social media last year to share how her
teenage niece, alone after her car broke
down on a desolate road, left a scribbled
note on the back of an envelope. It pro-
vided her name, a description of what
she wore and the time she’d left on foot
to seek help.
“If I do not make it there and you do
not hear from me idk (I don’t know)
someone probs took me,” she wrote.
It is a crisis that Denise Harvey, Trib-
al Council member at the Confederated
Tribes of Grand Ronde, has been speak-
ing out against for years.
“I think people are rather shocked at
how many Native American women and
people are missing from the reserva-
tions. And there aren’t these big investi-
Malinda Harris Limberhand talks about her daughter, Hanna Harris, who was
murdered in Montana in 2013. RION SANDERS/GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE
gations, you know? It doesn’t hit the
news. There aren’t multiple agencies
doing these searches or investigating,”
Harvey said.
In seeking explanations for the prob-
lem, MMIW activists point to centuries
of colonial trauma and prejudicial or in-
effective government policies.
Chronic underfunding for tribal po-
lice forces and a quagmire of conflicting
jurisdictions for agencies responding to
calls in and around tribal lands add to
the challenges.
And historical distrust of police may
prevent some from ever reporting their
loved one missing at all.
Growing up on “the rez,” Malinda had
always felt safe. It was the kind of place
where she could leave her keys in the car
and her door unlocked without concern.
Now, she felt certain that something
was wrong.
So she ignored the police officer’s ad-
vice and began asking questions her-
self, on Facebook and of the customers
who came to the store, a popular gather-
ing point in Lame Deer, a tight-knit
community of less than 2,000.
The next day, she filed a missing per-
son report despite what she’d been told.
And she didn’t stop her own inquiries.
Over the next few days, Malinda
drove to nearby towns asking people if
they’d seen Hanna. She helped organize
three searches. She obtained security
camera footage from two places where
people said Hanna had been. She even
drove a suspect to the police station for
an interview with investigators.
“We took on the role of being the in-
vestigating police officer,” she said,
crediting the dozens of community
members who turned out to scour the
banks of a creek and surrounding hills
where Hanna’s car had been found.
No waiting period
for missing persons
Malinda had been told wrong. Bureau
of Indian Affairs protocols for cases in-
volving a missing Indigenous woman
inside Indian Country say officers
should accept a missing person report
at any time, regardless of whether the
woman has only been missing for a
short time. BIA officials did not respond
to requests for interviews about the in-
cident nine years ago.
Even if Malinda had gotten immedi-
ate assistance, she faced a quandary
unlike any other in American law en-
forcement.
Crimes that occur on or near a reser-
vation are subject to a patchwork of
laws establishing criminal jurisdiction
among federal, state and tribal law en-
forcement agencies. Who’s in charge of
an investigation depends on the sever-
ity and location of the crime, and even
whether the victims or perpetrators are
Native.
In Oregon, the location a person goes
missing from can similarly complicate
an investigation.
Different tribes across the state have
different treaties with the government,
explained Cord Wood, a captain with
Oregon State Police. Oregon was one of
six states where Congress established a
transfer of federal law enforcement au-
thority within certain tribes. Public Law
280 was also enacted in California, Min-
nesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and later
Alaska.
Under the act, criminal jurisdiction in
the state was transferred to state gov-
ernments, meaning federal criminal ju-
risdiction is limited in the six states
while state jurisdiction was expanded.
But in non-PL 280 tribes within Oregon,
which include the Warm Springs Reser-
vation, the Burns-Paiute Tribe, and the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla In-
dian Reservation, Oregon does not have
jurisdiction within their lands.
“As a state law enforcement officer, I
am not a police officer on the Warm
Springs reservation,” explained Wood.
“It’s very complicated.”
The knot of policies becomes even
harder to untangle when the location of
the crime is uncertain or the identity of
the perpetrator is unknown.
When Malinda filed the missing per-
son report for Hanna, neither she nor
the authorities could know yet who
would ultimately be responsible for in-
vestigating the case. That can lead to
something like a never-ending round of
pass the buck, explained Monte Mills,
professor and co-director of an Indian
law clinic at the University of Montana.
“So what happens at the beginning of
these cases,” Mills said, “you have law
enforcement agencies saying, ‘Well,
that’s not our responsibility. We don’t
have jurisdiction. So call the sheriff.’
And then they call the sheriff and the
sheriff says, ‘Well, that’s not our respon-
sibility. Call the Bureau of Indian Af-
fairs.’ And they call the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, and they say, ‘Well, that’s not
our responsibility. Call the FBI.’ The FBI
says, ‘That’s not our responsibility. Call
the tribe.’”
The laws also challenge investiga-
tors, who can be stymied by limits on
UR
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schools.
The bill, the Truth and Healing Com-
mission on Indian Boarding School Pol-
icies Act, would further the Interior De-
partment’s work to investigate the
boarding schools and the policies that
created them. It would also develop rec-
ommendations to protect students’
graves, support repatriation of the chil-
dren interred in graveyards and discon-
tinue the removal of Indigenous chil-
dren by state social services, foster care
agencies and adoption agencies.
“We will not stop advocating until the
United States fully accounts for the
genocide committed against Native
children,” Parker said.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous
communities at the confluence of cli-
mate, culture and commerce in Arizona
and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol
at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow
her on Twitter at @debkrol.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the
intersection of climate, culture and
commerce is supported by the Catena
Foundation.
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whom they can question and where.
And while jurisdictional issues can crop
up in cases anywhere governmental
borders abut, tribal cases are complicat-
ed by vast spaces patrolled by under-
staffed agencies.
There are nine federally-recognized
tribes in Oregon:
h The Confederated Tribes of Coos,
Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians
represent a five-county service area
made up of Coos, Curry, Lincoln, Doug-
las, and Lane counties.
h The Confederated Tribes of Grand
Ronde have a reservation in Yamhill and
Polk counties.
h The Confederated Tribes of Siletz
Indians manage a reservation in Lincoln
County.
h The Coquille Indian Tribe has
members living in Coos County but its
service area covers Coos, Curry, Doug-
las, Jackson and Lane Counties.
h The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua
Tribe of Indians is also known as the
Upper Umpqua and has a government
based in Roseburg.
h The Klamath Tribes consist of
three tribes with a government based in
Chiloquin.
h The Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs represent three tribes who live
and govern the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation in parts of Wasco and Jef-
ferson counties. It is 105 miles southeast
of Portland.
h Further east is the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion, where three tribes share a nearly
300-square-mile reservation in Umatil-
la County.
h The ninth federally recognized
tribe is the Burns Paiute Tribe located
north of Burns in Harney County.
Annita Lucchesi — founder and exec-
utive director of Sovereign Bodies
Institute, an organization that collects
and analyzes data on MMIW — said the
system doesn’t work because it was
never designed to protect Native people
in the first place.
“It doesn’t reflect our value systems,
it does not create a safe environment for
Native victims of violence to come for-
ward, and it does nothing to address the
roots of violence in Indigenous commu-
nities,” said Lucchesi, who is of Chey-
enne descent. “So it’s a system that’s
pretty useless in terms of addressing
crises like missing and murdered Indig-
enous people or gender and sexual vio-
lence in our communities.”
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