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WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2022
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Women
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‘I was just looking
for my daughter’
When Hanna was still missing on Fri-
day, the day of her sister Rosie’s wed-
ding reception, Rosie pushed her moth-
er to file the missing persons report.
Again, Malinda said she was brushed off
by officers. Though they took the report,
they told her they were busy because of
the holiday weekend and told her Hanna
was probably drinking with friends and
scared to come home.
People on Facebook had messaged
her that Hanna had been seen at the
fireworks Wednesday night with Gina
Rowland and Garrett Wadda. Both were
about 40 at the time, and Hanna had
gone to school with the couple’s chil-
dren.
Malinda spotted Rowland’s car out-
side the Lame Deer Trading Post IGA
grocery store. She drove Rowland to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs police station
herself.
According to police reports, officers
said they learned through a series of in-
terviews with Rowland and Wadda that
the couple had been drinking with Han-
na the night of the fireworks. The three
of them went to the Jimtown Bar & Casi-
no, just outside the reservation. Later,
they stopped at the Cheyenne Depot
and finally at the home of Wadda’s aunt.
The couple told officers they didn’t
know what happened to Hanna after
they went to bed.
Malinda remembers Rowland’s in-
terview with police that day being brief.
Afterward, at her urging, tribal officers
went to look at Hanna’s car. Malinda fol-
lowed them, Rowland riding in the back
seat, cooing over Jeremiah. Biting back
her anger, Malinda noticed a cut on the
other woman’s hand.
The search of Hanna’s car didn’t turn
up anything.
Malinda drove to the bar where Han-
na had been seen Wednesday night. She
asked to see security camera footage.
She also obtained footage from the con-
venience store. One video showed Han-
na with Rowland and Wadda buying al-
cohol and leaving together. In the other,
Hanna paid for gas before returning to
her car, Rowland in the passenger seat,
Wadda in the back.
“I always think that was the police’s
job, but when a mother loses her daugh-
ter, it’s natural instinct to do whatever
you have to do to find her,” Malinda said.
“I really didn’t know I was doing the po-
lice’s job; I was just looking for my
daughter.”
By July 8, five days after Hanna was
last seen, tribal officers had notified the
FBI. Following a new tip, another search
was planned at the Lame Deer rodeo
grounds.
Investigators asked Malinda to iden-
tify a Nike shoe that was found, but she
couldn’t bring herself to do it. Hanna’s
sister Rosie had to go look at it.
There was no mistaking the black
and white high-top basketball shoe. It
was Hanna’s.
‘Stripped of authority to protect
their people’
Activists for missing and murdered
Indigenous women, in addition to many
scholars, say it’s impossible to separate
the problem from centuries of suffering
inflicted by the settlement of North
America.
Native tribes were decimated by dis-
eases introduced by colonizers and im-
poverished by policies that interned
them onto reservations. Later, children
were shipped to boarding schools and
forced to abandon their language and
culture. In the 1950s, a federal relocation
program encouraged Native Americans
to leave reservations for cities, while si-
multaneously trying to terminate recog-
nition of tribes, with pledges of support
that, like previous promises, weren’t
fulfilled.
The consequences of generational
poverty and all its trappings can be
gleaned from a consultant’s report on
policing in the Navajo Nation, the larg-
est of the 574 federally recognized Indi-
an nations in the U.S.
The report connects poverty to “the
effects of colonialism,” which it says
“are still experienced as drivers of criti-
cal problems in the Navajo Nation. To-
day, gender violence, alcohol and drug
abuse, inadequate housing, needs of the
mentally ill, availability of firearms,
drive demand on the police.”
The same conditions apply on many,
if not most tribal lands, along with In-
digenous communities far removed
from reservations, activists say. They
lay at the root of the crisis by exposing
Indigenous women to disproportionate
levels of violence, including domestic
abuse and human trafficking.
h Figures from the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention show
homicide was the third-leading cause of
death between 1999 and 2019 among In-
digenous females ages 1-34 — even more
than cancer, which was the third-lead-
ing cause of death among females of all
races in that age range. (The two leading
causes for both groups were uninten-
tional injury and suicide.)
h A 2016 study prepared for the Na-
tional Institute of Justice showed that 4
in 5 Indigenous women report having
experienced violence in their lifetime.
The numbers, drawn from a National In-
timate Violence Survey, also showed
that Indigenous women were 2.7 times
more likely than white women to have
experienced sexual violence in the pre-
vious year.
h In 2020, Oregon State Police’s re-
port on Missing and Murdered Indige-
nous Women found that of the 1,213
missing person entries, 13 were for Na-
tive American or Alaska Native females.
69% of the reported missing Native
American women were under the age of
18.
At the Confederated Tribes of Grand
Ronde, Warriors of Hope, the Grand
Ronde domestic and sexual violence
prevention program, works to spread
awareness and hold conversations
about the tribe’s coordinated response
to domestic violence, trafficking and
sexual violence.
Mary Kathryn Nagle, a lawyer who
specializes in tribal law and represents
Indigenous families pro bono in missing
cases across the country, said her efforts
to collect evidence, transcribe inter-
views with suspects and encourage in-
vestigators to interview witnesses in
cases of missing or murdered Indige-
nous women are often ignored.
“They can ignore these cases be-
cause what’s the consequence of ignor-
ing the death of a Native woman? What
happens to you?” she said. “I haven’t
seen a single person face any conse-
quences for ignoring a homicide of a Na-
tive woman or girl.”
For more than a hundred years, tribal
communities have sought to restore
their autonomy over crimes committed
on their lands; in the view of many Na-
tive advocates, the MMIW movement is
an indication that more progress is
needed.
Judge BJ Jones, executive director of
the Tribal Judicial Institute at the Uni-
versity of North Dakota, said it’s unfair
to blame tribal police forces when they
lack the authority to do more in some
cases and often lack the funding to do
the job that’s expected of them.
“There’s simply never been an in-
vestment in enough officers, enough de-
tectives, enough justice personnel to
really deal with (some) crimes,” he said,
adding, “I think that’s why people talk
about this jurisdictional quagmire in In-
dian Country because tribes have really
been stripped of their authority to pro-
tect their own territory and their own
people by Congress.”
While the federal government has
treaty responsibilities to keep tribal
members safe, tribal law enforcement
entities, which are overseen by the Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs, are severely un-
derstaffed and under-resourced.
In Oregon, not all of the nine tribes
had a police department prior to 2021.
The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua
Tribe of Indians formed its own police
force just last year. It had previously re-
ceived law enforcement assistance on
its lands from the Douglas County Sher-
iff ’s Office.
In December, the Klamath Tribes
named its first police chief. It was the fi-
nal step to creating its own public safety
department.
The reestablishment of the Klamath
Tribes’ public safety department is rep-
resentative of ongoing work in the state
to strengthen tribal police. Oregon legis-
lators passed Senate Bill 412 in 2011 to
expand the authority and responsibility
of tribal police. The bill extended pro-
tections and certain powers to tribal of-
ficers previously denied. Former House
Co-Speaker Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay,
said in a release at the time that the bill
would improve the relationship be-
tween tribal police and Oregon law en-
forcement officers.
New federal laws and actions have
also attempted to address the problem.
Savanna’s Act – named for Savanna
LaFontaine-Greywind, who was killed
in 2017 in North Dakota – requires the
Department of Justice to enhance train-
ing, coordination and data collection in
MMIW cases. The Not Invisible Act
aims to increase intergovernmental co-
ordination. In 2019, President Donald
Trump created Operation Lady Justice,
a presidential task force dedicated to
missing and murdered Indigenous peo-
ple.
But experts, advocates and family
members say these initiatives don’t go
far enough. And though the laws are on
the books, an October report from the
General Accounting Office noted how
federal officials failed to meet deadlines
imposed by the new laws for things like
public education on data gathering, out-
reach to tribal stakeholders and the de-
velopment of guidelines for responding
to such cases.
“That really shows their level of in-
vestment,” said Abigail Echo-Hawk, di-
rector of the Seattle-based Urban Indian
Health Institute. “It’s not only disap-
pointing but I don’t think that would
happen if this was a community of
white women.”
In 2016, the Urban Indian Health In-
stitute surveyed 71 urban cities across
the country to provide a snapshot of the
problem because they knew the federal
numbers weren’t capturing the full pic-
ture. There were at least 5,712 reports of
missing American Indian and Alaska
Native women and girls in 2016 accord-
ing to the National Crime Information
Center but only 116 cases were logged
through the U.S. Department of Jus-
tice’s federal missing person database.
The report identified 506 cases of miss-
ing and murdered indigenous women
and girls in urban areas.
Of the 506 cases identified by the Ur-
ban Indian Health Institute, the highest
number of cases were in the Southwest
(157), Northern Plains (101), Pacific
Northwest (84), Alaska (52) and Califor-
nia (40). Washington had 71 cases. The
institute attempted to survey Portland
but reported the department never pro-
vided any data despite the institute pay-
ing the charged fee for the records.
The study further illustrated how in-
complete the understanding of the issue
is, the report concluded.
“The biggest issue is racial misidenti-
fication or not collecting ethnicity,”
Echo-Hawk said.
She told the story of a missing wom-
an in Washington state who’d been mis-
classified after investigators looked at a
picture and guessed.
“I wish that was an uncommon story,
but it’s not,” she said, explaining her ad-
vocacy for police training on racial iden-
tity. “They don’t see it as an issue. In
fact, it’s so integral for us to understand
the scope of the problem.”
Indigenous activists were encour-
aged by Biden’s appointment of Haa-
land, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna
and the first Native American to oversee
the Interior Department that includes
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The former
New Mexico congresswoman has spo-
ken passionately about missing and
murdered Indigenous women.
When she announced in April 2021
the creation of a unit to investigate such
cases and coordinate resources among
federal agencies and Indian country,
supporters hoped it signaled real pro-
gress rather than just more bureaucratic
maneuvering.
Seeking an update, the USA TODAY
Network tried for weeks to secure an in-
terview with Haaland. In an October
Q&A with the Washington Post, she had
this to say about the unit’s progress:
“The new Missing & Murdered Unit is
providing leadership and direction for
cross-departmental and interagency
work involving missing and murdered
American Indians and Alaska Natives.
The Office of Justice Services recently
selected and on-boarded senior posi-
tions that are responsible for stakehold-
er collaboration, continued policy de-
velopment, overall performance of the
unit and direct oversight of field investi-
gations. In addition to building out its
personnel, the Department is focused
on increasing its infrastructure capaci-
ty, and has opened two additional in-
vestigative offices dedicated to review-
ing unsolved cases in Muskogee, Okla.,
and Vancouver, Wash.”
Stalled Oregon Progress
It has been over a year since the Ore-
gon U.S Attorney’s Office released its
first report on murdered and missing In-
digenous people in the state. Within the
report was a 2021 Action Plan that out-
lined goals to achieve in 2021.
The goals were to request data from
all law enforcement offices that respond
to Oregon tribes or tribal offices that
would have MMIP data starting last
year, develop MMIP Tribal Community
Response Plans, create a District of Ore-
gon MMIP working group, increase col-
laboration and communication with all
Oregon law enforcement and address
issues identified in the OSP report.
According to the plan, the office also
planned to schedule a virtual consulta-
tion with each of the federally-recog-
nized tribal governments in the District
of Oregon and to meet with all tribal
government and law enforcement enti-
ties to discuss MMIP issues and further
identify MMIP cases within each tribe.
But the pandemic stalled much of the
progress, MMIP coordinator Cedar Wil-
ki Gillette said. It also stalled other ef-
forts in the state to address the crisis.
The Missing and Murdered Native
American Women Work Group, estab-
lished as a part of House Bill 2625, be-
gan a listening and understanding tour
in December 2019. The group was only
able to host five listening sessions be-
fore the COVID-19 pandemic paused
events. There was no event at the Con-
federated Tribes of Grand Ronde and
Tribal Council member Lisa Leno said
they have also been unable to meet with
the US. Attorney’s Office in response to
the report.
“We’re hoping that as things start
opening up that they will be able to have
that conversation sooner than later,” Le-
no added.
The Oregon U.S Attorney’s Office was
able to launch its District of Oregon
MMIP working group, Gillette said. In-
vitations were sent to tribal, state and
federal representatives and the group
has begun to meet this year. The pur-
pose will be to “increase multi-agency
communication and collaboration in
support and response to Oregon-con-
nected MMIP cases,” Gillette said. A
law-enforcement subgroup will also be
established within the main working
group, she added.
Part of the action plan was to work on
tribal community response plans with
the tribes and that work began in Janu-
ary 2021 with the Confederated Tribes
of Warm Springs, Gillette said. Law en-
forcement, victim services, the public
and the media are working on a long-
term action plan that is culturally cus-
tomized based on how Warm Springs
wants to approach missing persons.
Multiple requests for an interview
with the Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs went unanswered.
“Now that we’ve worked on this pilot
project, we are so excited to see what the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
plan will look like and how it will reflect
their perspective on what should be
done for MMIP,” Gillette said.
Harvey, with the Grand Ronde, said
coordination needs to be improved
within the state.
“It’s pretty habitual that tribal people
will go from one reservation to another
because they have family and friends
(there),” she said. “If there’s a tribal per-
son that comes up missing, how do we
let our northwest tribes know?”
“Until we have some type of coordi-
nated effort amongst our tribes ... our
tribes aren’t going to be necessarily al-
ways aware right off the bat that ‘Oh,
Warm Springs has someone missing’ or
‘Oh, Klamath has someone missing,”
Harvey added.
That level of coordination is not hap-
pening at the moment. Washington this
year was the first in the nation to create
a statewide alert system for missing In-
digenous people, similar to the Amber
Alerts or silver alerts.
‘We did the best we could’
The night of July 8, Malinda gathered
her extended family for a “callback cere-
mony.” They laid out Hanna’s clothes on
the floor, singing and praying to return
her spirit to her body.
“I always thought she was alive
somewhere,” she recalled. “I flatly re-
fused to believe that she was deceased.
You know, it’s a mother’s worst night-
mare.”
After midnight, an officer came to the
house. According to police reports,
Hanna’s body was found at the rodeo
grounds in Lame Deer positioned face
down, her pants unzipped, her under-
wear pushed down and her shirt and bra
pushed up. Her body was too badly de-
composed to determine whether a sexu-
al assault had occurred or what caused
her death.
No arrests were made. Rowland and
Wadda had left Montana for the Wind
River Reservation in Wyoming.
In the end, the case was solved not by
investigative work but by a drunken
confession. In January 2014, six months
after Hanna’s disappearance, Rowland
went drinking with her former sister-in-
law and told her what happened. That
woman called the FBI, and Malinda
soon got word that Rowland and Wadda
had been arrested on murder charges.
“It was probably one of the happiest,
happy-sad, days of my life,” Malinda re-
called.
Police reports spelled out what Row-
land told her sister-in-law. She and
Wadda had been drinking with Hanna
that night in a trailer. Rowland said she
woke up to screaming and found Wadda
forcing himself on Hanna while she
screamed that she was being raped.
Rowland said Hanna hit her when she
tried to help. Rowland and Wadda beat
Hanna until she was unconscious. Row-
land dragged Hanna’s body outside, and
Wadda drove her to the rodeo grounds.
In October 2014, Rowland pleaded
guilty to second-degree murder and was
sentenced to 22 years in prison. Au-
thorities told Malinda they had insuffi-
cient evidence to prove the rape that
Rowland alleged. Wadda pleaded guilty
to accessory after the fact, admitting he
moved Hanna’s body. He was sentenced
in 2015 to 10 years in prison. He was re-
leased from federal prison in January.
Malinda said he’s back in Lame Deer.
People send her photos when they see
him. She wishes they wouldn’t.
“There was no evidence, so it was her
word against his,” Malinda said. “When
we were doing our own search, we liter-
ally lost a lot of evidence because we
weren’t professionals. We didn’t know
what we were doing. … We lost a lot of
forensic evidence, fingerprints, shoe
prints, stuff like that.”
In May 2019, then-Montana Gov.
Steve Bullock signed Hanna’s Act. The
law authorized the state Department of
Justice to assist in all missing persons
cases and created a missing persons
specialist. Oregon State Legislature
passed House Bill 2625 that same year.
The bill directed Oregon State Police to
conduct a study focused on increasing
and improving the reporting, investiga-
tion and response to cases involving
MMIW.
Other recent attempts at legislation
have failed in Oregon. Although House
Bill 4102 had support from the Oregon
State Police to establish a full-time trib-
al liaison in OSP, the bill never made it
out of committee. The bill would have
also required officers in the state to have
training specifically for MMIP investi-
gations.
Hanna’s birthday, May 5, is now a na-
tional day of awareness for missing and
murdered Indigenous people.
Hanna’s grave sits on a hill near her
mother’s house. Her tombstone is dark
gray and shaped like a big heart. Jeremi-
ah, her son, is now a shy 9-year-old. His
laugh reminds Malinda of Hanna, but
his growth remains a symbol of time
passing without her.
Though Jeremiah knows Malinda,
now 51, is his grandmother, he calls her
mom.
“I’m the only one he’s ever known,”
Malinda said.
Contributing: Andrea Ball, USA TO-
DAY; Sarah Volpenhein, USA TODAY
Network.