“I was aware that what was happening was in the nature of something unusual. A missing mother”
The Round House (5)
This is an experience that Joe is not alone in. Using two articles, the links to which will be included as notes with assignment if anyone wishes to read them, I look into the issue of Missing women on Native American reservations.
the first article was from publicintegrity.org and was about the numbers of missing, murdered, and sexually assaulted native women on reservations; for my topic i only focused on numbers of missing women.
The second article is from apnews.com and covers why native women are going missing and how the police are not much help in the matter.
Both involve the story of a missing university student name Ashley, a member of the blackfoot tribe, among other stories.
Slide two: the numbers
- As of 2016, there were 5,712 cases of missing Native American women reported to the National Crime Information Center. “The numbers are likely much higher because cases are often under-reported and data isn’t officially collected,”
- 1.8 percent of ongoing missing cases in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, even though they represent 0.8% of the U.S. population. → 0.7 of which were native women, despite only making up 0.4 % of the population
These cases include those lingering and open from year to year, but experts say the figure is low, given that many tribes don’t have access to the database.
- In Montana: 22 of 72 missing girls or women — or about 30 percent — were Native American, according to Montana’s Department of Justice. But Native females comprise only 3.3 percent of the state’s population
Keep in mind these numbers don't include any rapes, murders, or violent crimes committed against native women; these are just the missing.
- The numbers of crimes against natives has grown since the flooding tens of thousands of non native pipeline workers come to “man camps” near tribal land. "As oil prices go up, companies need more and more workers, and “that’s when you’re going to bring in quantity over quality,” according to a pipeline oil worker who was interviewed in Article 1"
.
Slide 3: Why?
On the side of the police there is the issue of jurisdiction:
- One person in Article 2 explains: "Where do I go to file a missing person’s report?... Do I go to the tribal police? ... In some places they’re underfunded and undertrained. The Bureau of Indian Affairs? The FBI? They might want to help, but a missing person case without more is not a crime, so they may not be able to open an investigation. ... Do I go to one of the county sheriffs? ... If that sounds like a horribly complicated mishmash of law enforcement jurisdictions that would tremendously complicate how I would try to find help, it’s because that’s what it is.”
- Article 1 quotes a senate report in its explanation for why these crimes are so high in number but so few in results: " This likely reflects “difficulties caused by the justice system in place,” including the “lack of police on the ground in Indian Country,” and “shortfalls for training, forensics equipment, (and) personnel,”
On the side of the Native peoples:
- A woman in Article 1 says that “Native American women are victims of violence far greater than any population in the country simply because of who we are as Native women, and what we represent, our tribal nations,”
-“It boils down to racism,” article 2 says, “You could sort of tie it into poverty or drug use or some of those factors ... (but) the federal government doesn’t really give a crap at the end of the day.”
Slide 4: Working Towards a Solution...but still a long way to go
Legal Activism:
- Article 1 mentions how activists, both native and non native, are pushing to have these crimes prosecuted as hate crimes; "A hate crime characterization ... would be a stepping stone—a solid stepping stone—to further legislation and acts to help with missing and murdered indigenous women efforts,”
Article 2 features a man name Lone Bear who is "working to develop a protocol for missing person cases for North Dakota’s tribes “that gets the red tape and bureaucracy out of the way,”
Lawmakers in a handful of states also are responding. In Montana, a legislative tribal relations committee has proposals for five bills to deal with missing persons.
Awareness:
In article 1 a pipeline oil worker says that the lack of background checks for the culture of racism demonstrated during production peaks in the Bakken formation. he believes his company will do a better job at “weeding out those bad eggs” in the next oil boom and is hopeful other companies will do the same.
- North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp has been working on passing a bill called Savannah's Act (named after a murdered pregnant native woman) improve tribal access to federal crime information databases. It would also require the Department of Justice to develop a protocol to respond to cases of missing and murdered Native Americans and the federal government to provide an annual report on the numbers.
These are small but important steps. Just as the hashtag used in the second article indicates... these Native American women, with so many taken and missing, are not invisible.
To include as a message:
I have never done a voice over in a power point presentation and so as a precaution I have included a script of what I said in my voice over as a document just in case.
I have included the links:
https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/murdered-and-missing-native-american-women-challenge-police-and-courts/
https://www.apnews.com/cb6efc4ec93e4e92900ec99ccbcb7e05
https://www.edgaged.net/2017/05/voice-over-in-google-slides.html
No comments:
Post a Comment