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Barr Announces Plan to Address Crisis of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women

HeadlineNov 26, 2019

Attorney General William Barr announced a nationwide plan to address the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women on Friday during a visit to the Flathead Reservation in Montana, which has suffered high rates of violence against indigenous women and girls. The Justice Department’s new initiative would invest $1.5 million to hire specialized coordinators in 11 U.S. attorney’s offices that have a large number of caseloads from Native American reservations. The coordinators would be responsible for developing protocols to improve the response of law enforcement in missing persons cases. For years, indigenous activists have been protesting the high levels of violence against indigenous women and girls. Many have called for the restoration of tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Native Americans who commit crimes on tribal land. This is Mary Kathryn Nagle, an attorney and citizen of Cherokee Nation, speaking on Democracy Now!

Mary Kathryn Nagle: “In 1978, the United States Supreme Court took away tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. And as the United States Department of Justice has reported, unfortunately, the majority of violent crimes against our Native women are committed by non-Indians. And so, that means that quite often our tribal governments, their hands are tied because of the legal framework the federal government has put in place.”

Native American women experience some of the highest rates of murder, sexual violence and domestic abuse nationwide, with several federal studies showing that on some reservations indigenous women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average.

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