House Hearing on Endangered Indigenous Women

Chairman Simpson (00:02):

Congressman Pingree?

Chairman Pingree (00:05):

Thank you so much Mr. Chair. Thank you in particular for hosting this hearing and thank you to Chairman Cole for being here. Your expertise on these issues is extremely valuable, so I really appreciate you taking the time to be with all of us. Good morning to our two panels. Thank you for being with us here today to discuss your work on missing and murdered indigenous women and to share your first-hand and very painful, often very painful knowledge. I want to particularly thank formerly the Ambassador of Mullion Bryant, now soon to be director Bryant, who has traveled from Maine to participate in this hearing. Thank you so much for all the work you do in Maine, in particular the work you've done on domestic violence. We appreciate the insights and all the information that you will share with us today. As we all know, this is a complex crisis and where there have been growing awareness and focus on resolving unsolved cases, understanding and addressing other contributing factors such as drug and human trafficking, domestic violence, poverty, housing issues, they're all equally important to confront the scale and severity of this issue.

(01:09)
The Not Invisible Act and Savannah's Act have heightened our awareness of the challenges associated with data collection and law enforcement, as well as the need for additional funding for staffing and public safety, safety and justice programs that can comprehensively address this crisis. That's why it's imperative we pass a full-year interior appropriations bill and not have programs constrained by operating under a continuing resolution. For decades, Native American and Alaskan Native communities have dealt with the challenges of high rates of assault, abduction, and murder of tribal members. The statistics are truly sobering. Four in five American Indian and Alaskan Native women, 85% have experienced violence in their lifetime, including over 50% who have experienced sexual violence. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that indigenous females experienced the second-highest rate of homicide in 2020 and homicide was in the top 10 leading causes of death for indigenous females aged one to 45. Overall, more than 1.5 million indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

(02:17)
The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that there are approximately 4,200 missing and murder cases that have gone unsolved. While these rates are staggering, research shows that less than half of violent victimizations against women are ever even reported to the police, and that even though approximately 71% of indigenous women live in urban areas, research is missing on the rates of murder and violence for these women. Some steps to be taken to address the crisis such as establishment of Operation Lady Justice in 2019 to pursue these unresolved cases, the creation of Missing & Murder Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services in 2021, provide leadership and direction for cross-department and inter-agency work, and the 2023 launch of the Department of Justice Missing and Murdering Indigenous Person Regional Outreach Program, which permanently places 10 attorneys and coordinators and five designated regions across the United States to help respond to cases, as well as the grant funding and public service announcements from the Administration for Native Americans.

(03:21)
But we need to do so much more to ensure that people feel safe and secure and that they are safe and secure in their homes and communities. I know this is going to be an important, and as the chair said, heartbreaking conversation today, but it will shed more light on the crisis. It will help us to come to a better agreement of how to move forward and do more to solve these problems. And I can't thank you enough for coming here, telling your personal stories, telling us about the work that you've been doing. You've all made a tremendous difference, but really it's up to us to make sure we get this across the finish line and reduce those numbers and really change the situation. So again, I want to thank the chair for holding this subcommittee and I know we will want to work together as a subcommittee to resolve this issue. Thank you.

Chairman Simpson (04:05):

Thank you, Congressman Pingree. Mr. Cole?

Chairman Tom Cole (04:08):

Move this.

Chairman Simpson (04:09):

I guess I should say Chairman.

Chairman Tom Cole (04:12):

Just Tom will do. Before I go into my formal remarks, I always want to reflect personally a minute here and number one, thank all our witnesses for coming. I know this is a challenging topic to talk about, but it's important that we talk about it. We appreciate that. I look forward to the next panel as well with what our folks that are dealing with this challenge with resources. But this was actually the first committee room that I was ever in as a new member of the appropriations. It was the subcommittee I wanted to be on, and I eventually got to this very chair sitting next to this very chairman who's back here for a second deal. And I have to my left, three distinguished former chairmen of this committee and now chairman again, and this is an interesting committee because it's a contentious committee on a lot of areas, but not on this area.

(05:09)
I couldn't say enough good things about my friend, Betty McCollum, and my friend and former Chairman Pingree and my friend, on these things, they worked together. As a matter of fact, I think the very first request I got as a new chairman was Ms. Pingree coming up to me and saying, "Tom, if you can give us more money, we'll spend it on law enforcement, Simpson and I will work together on this stuff." And I know how much from his first term as chairman because Mike talked about this crisis in law enforcement all across Indian country, very movingly and did what he could with the limited budgets we had in that period. But this is a priority and to my left, we've got great members here. Mr. Cloud's a good friend and he's from Texas, but he got educated in the right state in Oklahoma, so he knows something about Indians, and my friend Mr. Zinke, nobody cares more about Indians. He proved that both in Congress and when he was Secretary of the Interior. Jake, another Texan, they don't know too much about Indians as a rule.

(06:17)
One of the first things he did as a freshman was come up to my office and say, "I want to get to know more about this topic. I know it's an important topic." And appreciate his contribution. And finally, I was just in North Carolina with my friend Mr. Edwards to look there at storm damage. But of course he represents the Eastern Band and that's a great tribe. And so, the people here are, whatever their partisan differences or regional differences are very, very focused on trying to do something meaningful on this issue. And I will assure you, I'm very focused on following their lead. The solutions will come from here, but we have to write a check and I want to make sure they get the resources they need to follow up on these kinds of needs because it's something that bears federal action I don't think we've had enough of, but this hearing's a very good start. Let me just go to my formal comments.

(07:12)
As an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and the longest-serving Native American House of Representatives, tribal issues have always been at the forefront of the policy decisions I've made and advocated for as a member of Congress and as a member of this important committee. Native American and Alaskan Native women and girls continue to be disproportionately targeted by dangerous predators. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention data indicates that Native women and girls experience a murder rate 10 times higher than the national average. Tragically, I've seen these stats firsthand in my home state of Oklahoma, which ranks number two on the list of the top 10 states with Native American and Alaskan Native missing person cases. While these statistics are alarming, data collection is unfortunately still lacking and it will require sufficient awareness and resources to solve this crisis once and for all.

(08:05)
I have supported and co-sponsored several bills aimed at increasing data collection, record keeping and reporting, including the Savannah's Act and Not Invisible Act, both of which were signed in the law in 2020. I also continue to join resolutions recognizing the crisis of violence against native women and girls, and recognizing May 5th of each year as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Because of the extreme lack of resources, statutory roadblocks, and several other barriers, this crisis won't be solved without the work and partnership of leaders of the federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement. To put it into perspective, I often use the phrase, "Fishermen know where to fish, hunters know where to hunt, and predators know where to pray," and we can't give predators a place to pray anywhere, but especially in Indian country. I have been and will remain committed to ensuring the federal government provides the services and resources needed to protect Native Americans throughout Indian country.

(09:11)
Finding violence against indigenous women will take… Or, ending violence against indigenous women will take all of us working together. I want to thank Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Chellie Pingree for holding this hearing and their continued leadership on this issue. Through this subcommittee, Chairman Simpson has increased funding for tribal law enforcement programs, including an 82% increase for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women initiative. The interior bill also provides a 33% increase for the Violence Against Women Act to support prevention and responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. This bill clearly illustrates Chairman Simpson and this committee's commitment to ending violence against indigenous women and girls. I look forward to hearing testimony from each of our witnesses and engaging with each of you directly to understand what can be done to provide tribes and federal agency with what they need to protect these women and girls. So thank you Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree. I particularly appreciate both of your leadership on this issue every time. You've never had to wonder. I would say that frankly, about all the members up here, but I would sing out my friend Ms. McCollum, again.

(10:29)
You don't have to wonder where these people are going to be, and we actually have a more robust funding in this bill than our Senate counterparts. I don't think that's because they don't care. I just think we'll win that debate if we can get to negotiation because that won't be a Democrat or Republican position, that will be a House position, and frankly, I think the Senate will follow in that. So I think we have a rare opportunity here thanks to the leadership on this committee, on both sides of the aisle, to make a major step forward if we can just get to the negotiating table. This isn't going to be one of the areas where we disagree. I think it's one of the areas where we already agree, and I think it's one of the areas where this chamber will prevail in a negotiation. Our friends in the Senate will work with us on this. They're not going to be at odds with us on either side of the aisle. So with that, again, Mike, thank you very much for holding this hearing. [inaudible 00:11:26].

Chairman Simpson (11:28):

Thank you, Chairman. I hope you're right. I hope we can get to a negotiation eventually and get this done. That's a whole different issue. We'll begin with our panelists. Before I do, I should say we have an empty witness chair sitting on just the other side of Mr. Cole, as to represent the missing and murdered indigenous across this country. They're listening. Our first panel includes Eugenia Charles-Newton, Law and Order Committee Chair and member of the Navajo Nation, Abigail Echo-Hawk, very famous name in Idaho, Executive Vice President at Seattle Indian Health Board and Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute, and a member of the Pawnee Nation. Cheryl Horne, member of the Montana Missing Indigenous Persons Task and member of the Assiniboine. How do you pronounce that? Okay.

(12:36)
For some reason, that's just not one that clicks in my tongue. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (12:40):

[inaudible 00:12:41].

Chairman Simpson (12:42):

Yeah, there you go. Mary Jane Miles, a member of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee and member of the Nez Perce Tribe, and Mullen Bryant, Wabanaki Alliance, incoming director and member of the Peniscot Nation. Eugenia? Each panel will present their opening statements and then members will be provided an opportunity to ask questions of all of them. So Eugenia, you're up.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (13:15):

Thank you. Good morning everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to give my statement here today. I want to begin by reading aloud some of the names of those who are currently missing. Paul Begay is a male Dine relative from Delcon, Arizona, who's the earliest known missing Dine man that we have in our records. He was last seen in California in 1972. Anna Curley, female Dine relative from Kayenta, Arizona, who is the earliest known missing woman we have in our records. Ms. Curley was last seen in Kayenta, Arizona. Ella May Begay, an elderly Massani who was a grandmother from Sweetwater, Tlaquan, Arizona who went missing June 15, 2021, which was the same day Renal Bennett also went missing from the community that I represent in Shiprock. Everett Charlie was a classmate of mine who I remember danced to Michael Jackson in our first grade class. I didn't even know he was missing.

(14:10)
These are a few of the names that I want to read aloud so they know they are not forgotten. The total number of Dine relatives missing on the Navajo nation that we know of is 75, as of today. The total number of Dine relatives murdered, we don't have that number. It's unaccounted for because we lack the manpower to track those cases properly, and we also lack the infrastructure to record all cases. We still have 3G on our nation in certain places on the Navajo nation and no cell coverage in large areas of our nation. But, I digress. The two major issues that hinder justice for missing murdered Dine relatives on the Navajo nation are jurisdictional lines that many and relatives don't see, and non-communication and or miscommunication amongst law enforcement and non-communication and or miscommunication with families. Invisible jurisdictional lines, you probably are asking, "What is that?"

(15:06)
So, let me explain. When crimes begin in towns that border the Navajo nation, they are sometimes passed along to the Navajo nation law enforcement for jurisdictional reasons. Sadly, because the person is Navajo, it is sometimes assumed that Navajo will handle the case. In essence, the buck gets passed. And because the Navajo nation lacks funding, has shortage of law enforcement, and faces recruitment and retention issues, cases go unresolved, they lose momentum, and cold cases become frozen cases in time. As time marches on, the communication stops and everybody assumes that somebody is doing the work. I have a good friend of mine, her name is Vanjie Randall. I knew her since high school. She had a son named Zachariah Juwan Shorty. Zach went missing in the midst of COVID July 21, 2020. When she reported the situation to Farmington, New Mexico, the Farmington Police Department, which borders the Navajo nation, they told her that the Navajo Nation law enforcement would be taking the case. Four days after she reported Zach missing or she tried to report him missing, he was found dead in a field in Inahanzad, New Mexico on the Navajo nation.

(16:25)
The jurisdictional issues prevented the case from being properly investigated, and it also prevented the communication that was supposed to be going on between law enforcement and Ms. Vanjie. Vanjie talks about her son all the time. She takes part in the MMIW marches. Zach was only 23 when he was murdered and his murderer still walks free today. Vanjie says that she starts her day every day with a prayer not to find the person who killed her son, but a prayer for herself and for those who are also experiencing MMIW. As with many nations and reservations, the Navajo nation lacks the proper number of personnel to investigate crimes and when someone goes missing, little to no resources are devoted to the case, and if there are resources that are available, it's only for the first few days that these resources are allowed to be used. The Navajo Nation is 27,000 square miles and has roughly 200,000 Navajos living on the Navajo nation. Our nation spans across three states, Arizona and New Mexico and Utah, and is the size of West Virginia.

(17:36)
We are the largest tribe in the United States, and we have roughly 400,000 Navajo citizens who are registered as Navajos. In terms of law enforcement, we have an estimated 218 law enforcement officers when the national average per the Tribal Law & Order Act reports that 2.8 officers are needed per thousand members of the service population. That would mean that we would need 560 officers to meet the national average. As for criminal investigators, the Navajo Nation has 32. These investigators are responsible for investigating crimes committed by an Indian and those crimes that fall under the Major Crimes Act 18 U.S.C Section 1153. These 32 investigators work in joint cooperation with the federal Bureau of Investigations and United States Attorney's Office. On Navajo, because of the lack of personnel, our investigators also serve in the unique capacity of being not only investigators, but also coroners and medical examiners. Instead of spending their time investigating crimes and looking for our Dine relatives who are missing our murdered, our investigators spend 75% of their time investigating all deaths, even those that are considered to be natural deaths.

(18:52)
They complete and certified death certificates, review medical records, assess medications, conduct home assessments, administer external examinations of bodies, draw fluids. They do all of the stuff that coroners and medical examiners normally do. Be mindful that Navajo proposed for two year funding to establish a medical-legal death investigation system, and if approved, this would allow the Navajo Nation to be the first tribe to hire coroners and possibly one medical examiner to handle deaths on the Navajo nation. This would allow our criminal investigators to spend more of their time investigating major crimes such as missing and murdered crimes. Public safety and justice should be a bipartisan issue. I appreciate the time. [inaudible 00:19:38]. Thank you for hearing my words. My name is Eugenia Charles-Newton. I proudly serve my Dine people as a council delegate on the 25th Navajo Nation Council. I represent the largest community on the Navajo Nation, which is Chibok, New Mexico. I am Bit'ahnii, born for 'Áshįįhi. My maternal grandfathers are 'Áshįįhi and my paternal grandfathers are Tábąąhá. [inaudible 00:20:02]

Chairman Simpson (20:05):

Thank you, Eugenia. Abigail?

Abigail Echo-Hawk (20:09):

Thank you. It's an honor and a privilege to be here today, and I want to start by thanking this committee for doing something I didn't think would be done, and that is answer the call of the community to recognize that accountability is necessary and needed as we look at what has happened previously with legislation like Savannah's Act, the Not Invisible Act, the resources that are supposed to be available across the Department of Justice through tribal carve outs and through resources that are supposed to flow through counties into tribal communities. I wasn't sure I'd ever sit at a table where I'd be able to talk to you about what the accountability looks like, so thank you. I'm in deep gratitude for your answer to the call that we put forward to have this hearing. I'm Abigail Echo-Hawk. I'm an enrolled citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma on my father's side. I was born and raised in the heart of Alaska with the Upper Ahtna Athabaskan people of Mentasta Lake, Alaska.

(21:02)
I live and serve in the city of Seattle on the land of the Coast Salish people as the Executive Vice President of the Seattle Indian Health Board, which is an Indian healthcare provider in an urban setting, in addition to a fellow qualified health center. And I'm blessed to serve my community in the darkest of times that you could ever be experienced, and that is when your loved one goes missing, when your child is gone and you never hear from them again, or when your loved one is found under the ground that held them waiting for justice, justice that they often never see. In 2018, I co-authored the very first report on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, the very first data report that put into the hands of the tribal warriors who sit in our tribal councils, those who operate in our urban settings, the families and the community members, and the grassroots organizers who have been screaming for justice for their invisible loved ones, not for 10 years, 20 years, but for more than 500 years.

(21:59)
That data report showed that we had places like Oklahoma who ranked second for the most missing and murdered people, the state of Washington, others and others, but what we had actually focused on was those that were missing in urban settings. This report was used because we also found that the then drafts of Savannah's Act wouldn't have affected Savannah Graywind. Savannah Graywind, who was brutally murdered, her baby cut from her, taken while she died. Savannah Graywind in the initial writings of that legislation wouldn't have been affected because she was killed off reservation. That report was focused on the urban Indians like myself, and I want to be very clear, urban is where I live. Tribal is who I am. That is the same for all of our populations who have deep ties to their tribal communities, whether they live in cities, whether they're able to migrate back and forth for ceremony, for family, or whether because of imposed poverty, they've never been able to leave those cities after being forced to be removed during the relocation.

(23:07)
These people are suffering in the same way that our tribes are suffering, like my relative here just shared about her reservation. In that report, we found that not only were our people missing and murdered, but that law enforcement wasn't collecting the data, and we saw here at the Capitol, this data conversation begin to rage in a way that was so beautiful that we saw it in Savannah's Act, in the Not Invisible Act, and when it was signed into law, we were ecstatic because not only at that point had we worked with members of Congress to ensure that urban Indians were represented in Savannah's Act and the Not Invisible Act, but that also the resources for our tribal people are going to be there. However, for those of us serving in the urban settings, the promises of Savannah's Act, the Not Invisible Act have never come. The urban Indians have been left behind in resources. We have been left behind in resources and trainings, and the law enforcement officers that I work with often tell me, "We know it's a problem in our city and we have no idea how to address it."

(24:08)
They don't know how to access the trainings that the Department of Justice says they have, they don't know how to get the trainings on how to work with tribal communities and to communicate with them when their loved ones go missing. When that report first came out, I remember presenting it to a group of tribal leaders, and afterwards, an elder came up and she held my face in her hands and she pulled me towards her and she said, "Abigail, I've buried every one of my sisters covered in bruises, and not a single one of them have I ever seen justice for." She said, "I'll carry you in my heart and in my prayers as you, the team, and all of the advocates that I'm on this table with right now carry and push for justice." We are not seeing justice with Savannah's Act and the Not Invisible Act, and in fact, it took more than almost two years for them to just appoint members to the Not Invisible Act Commission. I have heard from both the commission members and from the community that that was a rush process as a result of them trying to rush through, and according to the Government Office of Accountability report, they said it was a result of COVID is what slowed them down. Well, COVID was what affected the community and members I was working with. As we saw an increase in both murder and violence as a direct result of being quarantined with abusers, stories of individuals who were in the Midwest and burned alive in the middle of a field, of families who had their loved ones taken and trafficked away from them. It wasn't just happening, it was actually happening more, and that delay harmed us. And so, that rushed process, which resulted in some really fantastic recommendations, what our leaders were able to do in a rushed amount of time was amazing, but our families were not able to come and give the testimony that they wanted to as a direct result of this rush process. They need to do better.

(26:01)
Our urban communities must be involved, and we have to ensure that all of our people, regardless of where we live, have the opportunities to see justice. Like the young woman who walked up to our agency from a mile away in downtown Seattle to our clinic where she had been beaten, assaulted, her face, covered in blood, her clothes taken from her, where she walked in her underwear and a T-shirt all the way up to our facility, and not a single police officer, not a single community member, nobody stopped or helped her until she walked into our clinic, sat in a chair, and our traditional Indian medicine people came and cared for her, which is why it is so important right now for CMS to ensure that we can get reimbursed for traditional Indian medicine and why it is integral to ensure that we have the full funding of the Indian Healthcare System because my community and I are the ones caring for these people when the law enforcement simply leave them behind. There is continuous opportunity, however. We've actually seen efforts by the FCC to copy what we've done in Washington State where I sit on the task force for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls for Washington State, where I assisted in co-authoring the very first legislation to create the Red Alert, which is a missing endangered persons alert, that was then used as a template for the Feather alert in California. The conversations began at the FCC level where what could this look like if we were going to do it across the nation, and there was promising conversations, but when in March, 2024, a new alert was announced by the FCC, it was one that encompassed all missing endangered people, not just American Indians and Alaskan Natives. We need more than that, and what these alert systems have shown in both California and in Washington is incredible success.

(27:51)
When we issue these alerts and we use naming conventions like the Feather Alert, like the Red Alert, to find young people like the story of a young person who was kidnapped, trafficked, and found at a border, we have to do better, and I urge you all to think about authoring legislation because now the FCC hasn't done what we had hoped they would, but there is opportunity to have legislation that would establish a National Alert system for missing and endangered American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and indigenous people. The tribal consultations have already started. We have members of the FCC, and this has very minimal fiscal impact as it uses the already established systems of the Amber Alert, the Silver Alert, and what is now the Missing and Endangered Persons alert. These loved ones that are taken from us.

(28:43)
Recently, I was told the story of two trafficked individuals and this woman told me the story, they were teenagers at the time, where they would be raped and assaulted by those that had kidnapped them, and they were parked down by the water and they would rape them and they would beat them.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (29:01):

She remembers picking up her friend and carrying her to the water that was next to where they were parked, and she carried her friend into the water because she was too beaten and too bruised and too harmed to walk herself. And she bathed her in that stream to wash away what had happened to her. And then it kept happening again and again and again. An alert system like the Red Alert, like the Feather Alert at the federal level that holds accountability, also creates training and opportunity for law enforcement. And it also creates more awareness from law enforcement and surrounding communities of this because I don't want our loved ones to keep having to carry each other to the water to wash away the trauma that they're experiencing.

(29:48)
My family, the Echo Hawk family has for many years, since the inception of the United States government has served in our armed forces, our native people, it is one of our proudest achievements is our serving in the armed forces. At this point in time, we represent a little over 1% of all of those in the active armed services and our communities have dedicated ourselves to service to this country. However, we do know that those in the military often suffer as a direct result of this crisis, and it's something we have not talked about, nor has it been addressed by any of the legislation that has been passed, nor any of the efforts that we are aware of at the state level, except for now in the state of Hawaii and the state of Alaska. We know that our active duty service members who are American Indian, Alaska, Native suffer high rates of sexual assault domestic violence.

(30:42)
However, finding that data on what actually is happening is very, very difficult. And then when we look at the crisis of those active duty service members who are not serving in the way like my Uncle Brummett did, my Uncle Brummett was a Pawnee code talker. He was a man who was dedicated to service to his community that instilled into us what it meant to serve in the armed forces. There are members in our armed forces who are not serving in the way that my Uncle Brummett did that many of your constituents do. And instead we see them victimizing those tribal communities and indigenous communities around them. My organization is currently funding the work in the state of Hawaii to look at the impact of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls on native Hawaiians. And their very first report they found in one particular sting operation that of those who were online soliciting sex from an identified 13-year-old girl, 38% of those who were arrested as a result of that sting were active duty military.

(31:46)
This is a crisis that we have to address and it's one that's important to me. I was a young girl who was affected by this violence. I experienced sexual assault at the first age of six. I attempted suicide the very first time when I was nine years old. The creator must have had a plan for me because I don't know how I lived. As a result of that trauma, the way that I acted as a teenager was not always the way we would want our loved ones to do. In February, I sat in a room with other people in Alaska and we talked about in that room about the active trafficking of young girls like me through the military bases in Alaska. And the reason I was part of that conversation is because I had been part of being victimized. And I remember being 16 years old looking up on the wall of a barrack that I shouldn't have been in and seeing my name written down along with other women that I knew, other girls.

(32:40)
And I realized it was a list that this military man that I was with was making of the girls that he was victimizing, including myself. And he had written our names on the wall. I can see that in my head right now in a picture, my name and other names. We have to address what is going on in the Department of Defense and we need to know. And right now we don't know the baseline of what is happening. So what I'm asking for is that we ask the military and there is opportunity within the National Defense Authorization Act for them to compile a report of currently available data on human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and also homicide of both active duty military who are affected by this and those who are perpetrators in the active duty military. And we need to know what the impact is of the military on this crisis. And of those active duty service members who deserve, they deserve safety too.

(33:46)
I carry their stories with them. I was with the women in Hawaii who are doing this work recently, and she handed me her baby who was about four months old, and I was holding him on my chest. And I thought about that elder who said she carried me in prayer and I thought about the woman who washed her sister off and that stream by the river as they were being trafficked. And I thought about this young baby who I could feel his breath on my cheek, his hand reaching up to pull my hair, just like I'm sure many of you have held your babies and your grandchildren. And I thought, "This cannot be the outcome for this young child." Our opportunity is now, the accountability is now and four years from now I don't want to be sitting in the same chair eight years after the signing of Savanna's Act and Not Invisible Act screaming into nothingness that urban Indians are still not included. Please ensure that there is accountability for urban Indian populations as we move forward in doing everything we can to achieve justice. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (34:56):

Thank you, Abigail. Cheryl.

Cheryl Horn (35:02):

Good morning, everybody. I'd also like to repeat what she said and thanking you for bringing us to the table. I'm just the same as her. Let me start over. Hello, my name is Cheryl Horn [inaudible 00:35:18]. Standing in the Rain is my name. I was named by my grandfather, Gilbert Horn Senior, who also came to Washington on many visits and advocated for our people, and he was a code talker. So I just want you to know that my name came from when he was standing in the Himalayan Mountains in the rain for 30 days. So I try to stand tall and take what I can. So I'm a grassroots advocate who came to MIP as a family member of two missing girls, Tristan Gray and Selena Not Afraid. My nieces were both found deceased. So I choose to speak up at any table I can.

(35:56)
With Selena, she was missing for 20 days and she was last left a rest stop and the authorities left the rest stop. But us as a family, we didn't leave. We stayed there, we camped there, we slept there. We were the search party while the county sat across the road at the other closed rest area, the state of Montana turned the power on for us at this closed rest area. And we were watched by the county and we had to fight for investigation. We had to fight for everything. And then on day eight, Operation Lady Justice showed up. And when he showed up, he told me, "They showed up because I wouldn't be quiet."

(36:44)
So day eight, he showed up and I thought, "Okay, we're going to leave." Well, no, it includes a profile first, they'll profile your child. So they didn't look on day eight. We had to stay until day 13 when Operation Lady Justice brought the search team, the official search team, and we were able to pack up, go back into the urban city of Billings and resume our search efforts there. At the same time, having people watch the rest area for us just to verify that something is happening. So my niece was found on day 20 on a grid search. I believe she was found on day 19, and we were found out day 20. But the grid search from Operation Lady Justice brought her home. But when I was standing there with my sister looking out into a dark field with my uncle, a Marine veteran who was 60-something years old, protecting us, that's all we had.

(37:40)
And my boyfriend, a 60-year-old Marine vet in the middle of nowhere. So when I stood there and I looked out there and I told my sister, "Do you think she's here?" And she said, "No." I said, "I don't either." But when we get her back, because we're going to get her back, we're not going to quit until we get her back one way or the other. When I get her back, I won't stop because when she moves, there's another girl standing behind her and how can I turn and walk away after I've done that work to get my niece and made noise? So from there, I just became a grassroots advocate, working on zero budget, having people call me because I went through it. So here I am trying to heal and trying to deal with my stuff, but at the same time, we're at the rest area.

(38:24)
I was in Billings helping a sex traffic victim get back to South Dakota at three o'clock in the morning. I was providing her food, clothes, water, and security. And in that little time she went from Seattle to me. There was a black man already trying to get her to Alabama in that short of time. So from Billings to Rapid City here we were crossing our fingers, praying that she got off in Rapid City. And she did. I had to kind of tell him some untruth about me. He's like, "Are you a fed?" And I was there in my pajamas and I said, "Yes. And every stop you go, there's going to be one just like me." So there's things you have to do as families to get the ball rolling and to get somebody to hear you. And I believe our biggest barrier is the lack of proper investigation and prosecution.

(39:18)
I come from a tribal level, but I've been on county and state issues too. So on a tribal level, we recently, I'm on a Montana task force, and we recently had a search and rescue training, and this is just an example of what we have to deal with at home. I had a hard time getting law enforcement to come to our training, free training, and we had a missing person at the time. So they sent their drug dog officer. We went through all the training, and when he was done, I tried to talk to him about plans I had for our community, and he looked at me and said, "I'm too busy. I probably won't even be doing this." After he wasted his time, everybody's time coming to that. So that's what we deal with on a tribal level. My MIP budget is zero, yet I help people.

(40:10)
I advocate for a lady that lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her daughter was killed in a domestic violence situation in Montana. I'm her advocate. She's not a Native American. I advocate for everybody. I don't ask you where you come from, what color you are, anything, you call me, I help you. I try to find resources. That's all I can do. I can't give resources unless I have money in my pocket from my paycheck. I don't have resources. I do come from a tribe that supports my efforts. And if I do come with a serious enough issue, I do get the support from my chairman. But unfortunately, tribal programs, they're not a resource for us. I can't go to a tribal program for a girl that's right now it's the treatment programs. They're taking them off to California, Oklahoma everywhere for treatment, getting them hooked up in their system with Medicaid and then kicking them out.

(41:09)
So when you're out, okay, all of a sudden you're missing again, right? Your family doesn't know where you are in another state. I have no resources to get her home. I have to beg on my Facebook page for people to donate to get… She's probably not even coming to my reservation. She's probably coming somewhere else, but we want to get her home. We have formed a network where was none. When my nieces went missing, I stood on Billing's rims and hollered because nobody heard me with my first niece. Nobody heard me when I looked for Tristan.

(41:42)
And you know what? We found her. We found her killer because we made the cops look at the airplane at the airport evidence, and he got out after he ran over my niece. He looked at her and he got back in his vehicle and he left. And three years later, when they closed his case, the county attorney in Billings, Montana looked at me and said, "He feared for his life when he hit her. So he is free. We're not pressing any charges on him because he feared for his life when he ran over my niece."

(42:16)
So that's a concept that now is catching on in Montana. We have other people now who've got hit, but they feared for their life. So they got out of things. This fearing for your life is an excuse, and the only person who should be fearing for their life is the victims. So I guess I have not heard much on the Not Invisible Act since it came into effect. When it comes to Operation Lady Justice Selena was the only case I can ever say that had any effect. I've never had anybody reach out to me on all the states and all the advocates I have to say that they were affected. And because I made such a noise, my niece was helped. And that's not right, because not everybody is brave to stand up.

(43:10)
Not everybody's brave to sit in front of you, but when there are people are missing, they have to turn to somebody. So I guess in closing, I want to thank you for sharing this space to me, there's a lot of families that are working on healing. And myself as a family, as advocate, I had to step back. And you know what? I tried to step back and I couldn't, I had to take some mental health to myself, heal from my niece. But the whole time I was doing it, I felt guilt because I knew people weren't reaching out to me. I knew they didn't know what to do. So I want to tell you, on the plane ride here, I stopped in Minnesota and I turned my phone on. I had a message from a young girl in my community. She had recently been held by gunpoint by her boyfriend and beat up. And she has not heard from anybody. She does not know where it is. She's scared to come back to our reservation. We don't have any follow up as victims, we don't have a recourse. We sit and wait for nothing. We sit and wait for no updates. So this young girl, I can't help her today, but when I go home, I will do my best to help her, which means asking the officers where the investigation is asking, just seeing where her case is and getting her some answers back. And very seldomly, do we address the mental health of this. So as an advocate, I went through it. So my purpose now, my main purpose is I try to heal people, not personally heal.

(44:48)
I'm not a healer, but I try to find resources and I work towards healing with them. And I encourage them very much to heal and not be angry because if we have anger, we're not getting anywhere. We're not going to get anything done. And this is… I've heard it before, it's non-party. We're humans. And I'm not here just for every Native American girl. I'm here for everybody who has been through this injustice of murder, domestic violence, killings. So I have a few names, if you can remember one and Google one, my job has been done today because my point is that these people are humans.

(45:31)
[inaudible 00:45:36], Casey, Freeman, Leon, Thomasine, Preston, Claiborne, Selena, Tristan, Ashley, Cole, Willie. These are names I sat and wrote. As I sit here, these aren't everybody I advocate. These are just the names that popped in my cloudy head right now to remind myself this is why I am here. And Shacaiah Blue Harding is still missing. That's another thing. As her and her mom and another victim of her perpetrator, we tracked him down. We went on social media and found him when the Billings police told us they couldn't find him. We couldn't get him to speak up for Shacaiah, but we got his DNA, we got them to test his DNA, and he popped hot on some rape kits, some backed up rape kits in the state of Montana.

(46:33)
So he is in jail on rape, but he will not tell us where Shacaiah Blue-Harding is. And he was the last person with her. He was her boyfriend at the time, and she was hiding from him at the time. So all we can do is continue to talk about Shacaiah and if she's somewhere, let her know we won't give up on her. And I just want to thank you again, everybody, because from the very beginning, this is where I pictured myself. I tried to manifest this to come to Washington DC. So when I finally got it, I was really shocked. So kind of stuttered too, I'm starstruck.

(47:13)
But this is something that when I was screaming out into a field in the middle of the night telling her that everybody who cares is here and it's just our family. So the data and all that, I'm all for data, but I'm all for the resources that need to trickle down to the actual mental health of families, the resources of families going to pick up their look for their kids. Luckily we have some non-profits that have been formed to do this, but even they're moving away from it. So thank you for letting us come to the table and keeping our ball rolling because this is a crisis. It's not a issue. It's a crisis and it's a crisis all across the United States, and it's not just Indian country. It is everybody. Everybody gets injustice and everybody deserves justice. So thank you again for having me.

Speaker 2 (48:13):

Thank you, Cheryl. Mary Jane.

Mary Jane Miles (48:16):

Thank you. [inaudible 00:48:25]. Good morning. I am Mary Jane Miles. I am an elected representative serving on the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. I'm also an ordained Presbyterian minister and the Presbyterian Church USA. The Nimiipuu, the Nez Perce people want to thank this committee and the administration for their efforts again, to understand the needs of Indian country and for the hand of friendship to hear my thoughts on an issue very important to me and to many others. Missing and murdered indigenous people was first introduced to me as a policy issue during my visit to Vancouver BC. I heard how the First Nations were lamenting the murder of women in that day that were not being investigated and the invisibility of native women in the crimes against them. I then began to understand that there were unsolved murder and missing indigenous persons in the United States and that this is not an isolated problem sometimes I feel that the Native Americans are so few that we are very easy to forget.

(49:54)
As you can see, I am an older Native American woman who knows of the turbulence in a relationship as I myself am a domestic violence survivor. During the time I endured that relationship, I wondered why and how our tribal people came to this dark time with fractured relationships with no accountability. I believe that diseases like drug and alcohol abuse play a big part in the overall problem, but also the poverty on the reservations as well. My inner being agonizes over the lack of worth given to native women and the senseless acts that lead to their harm. In the past, people in power have not cared about native women, but their families and their tribes do. One instance that touches my heart is the laws of a young woman I counseled who was strangled by her partner. I had also counseled the perpetrator beforehand, and I just happened to be a friend to his father.

(51:14)
I conducted the funerals of both the young woman after the crime and the perpetrator's dad who died shortly thereafter. This was an awful time of unrest and sadness that tore our community apart. Women continue to be the backbone of our tribal communities. I like the way we handle life, the way we handle difficult situations. Men need to be a part of that solution to this very real problem on the reservation. As our tribes grow and change alongside the communities around us, some of the traditional roles of the men have been taken away from them. Native men have historically been providers, but with the advent of reservation life, this role was taken away from them. So we need to get to work combating the root of the problem, which include gaps in law enforcement and the lack of communication between jurisdictions. We need to work on establishing and funding recovery centers, extended family support programs, and fully supporting tribal law enforcement and detention centers.

(52:41)
We will use some of the funding to assist with training our police force and to assist with investigations. Another proposed program is designed to help persons who are vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking by providing backpacks that contain personal safety alarms and a flashlight, as well as other safety items. And we are also strengthening our data collection for vulnerable persons by creating a database with information that can be provided to law enforcement if a person goes missing. We are also working to coordinate information sharing with other regional tribes to lessen the time it takes for us to know when a person has gone missing on a sister reservation. In closing, I would like to say that I am encouraged that there are movements to highlight this issue and hearings like today to help recognize and address the wrongs to the native women and men and help prevent them in the future. I am tired of crying out loud on this issue, and I don't want to do that anymore. I want to experience progress, and I want to thank you again for your time.

Speaker 2 (54:20):

Thank you, Mary Jane. Molly.

Molly (54:37):

Good. All right, great. Chairman Simpson, ranking member [inaudible 00:54:43] and honorable members of this committee, I so appreciate you holding this hearing and giving us space today. I have served as a Tribal Ambassador for my tribe, the Penobscot Nation, for over seven years. I will soon advocate for all of the Wabanaki tribes in Maine as the incoming executive director for the Wabanaki Alliance. [inaudible 00:55:01]. My name is Molly and Bryant. I'm from the Penobscot Nation, and these warrior women here today have given me the courage to say that I'm also a domestic violence victim.

(55:15)
A man once looked me in the eye and said, "I could kill you right here and nobody would ever know." He was right, and I'm so lucky he didn't. I'm a mother to three daughters. Iris is 2, Leila is 15, and Carmela just turned 18. Their safety and well-being has driven much of my work and advocacy on the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and people. One in three indigenous women will be the victim of a violent crime in her lifetime, and there are four of us in my immediate family. The societal component of this crisis and why it has been so hard to combat and address cannot be overlooked. When I was young and watched the Walt Disney movie Peter Pan, it was the first time I can recall seeing stereotypes about my people. The Indian encampment scene and the use of stereotypes around tribal women are a sad example of this.

(56:13)
Tiger Lily, the Indian princess, she's a child, but made to look exotic and tempting. The older women in the camp are brash and mean and called racial slurs. Even the Disney version of Pocahontas, which tells a story meant to portray progress and honor gets it wrong. Pocahontas was likely 14 when she met the English soldiers. She was taken to Europe where she died of disease away from her family, culture and homelands. These stereotypes have broadly applicable implications and unfortunately have been propagated throughout our society. A lot of our experience as real indigenous women has been minimized and at times silenced altogether. While Americans embrace these false creations of us, instead of seeing us as real people, it makes us objects and it makes us less than human. And candy coating our history and reality doesn't help anything. It makes us more invisible.

(57:17)
When an indigenous woman goes missing, there is not the same attention and action as when a Caucasian woman does. The primary reasons for this are threefold, societal indifference, jurisdictional and coordination issues, and a lack of resources for tribal law enforcement agencies. The false conceptions of our people often lead to victim blaming and attitudes that minimize attention given to these cases. If an indigenous woman goes missing from a bar or a boyfriend's home, or if she has addiction or family issues, she's often seen as putting herself in harm's way, and she is often seen as the problem. It is a fact that a lot of, quote, unquote, negative behaviors and dysfunction are a lasting consequence

Molly (58:00):

Consequence of the horrors inflicted on our people in the colonization of this country, be it the theft of land, the pandemics, the residential school policy and the theft of our children, the outlawing of our religion. We are real people deserving of equal rights and treatment, and we are healing from so much. Jurisdictional issues are equally harmful. There needs to be clear duties and processes delineated before, during, and after these crimes occur. Until recently, the Wabanaki people in Maine lacked equal access to the tribal provisions of a Violence Against Women Act due to our outdated and impressive 1980 Maine Indian Land Claim Settlement Act. Fortunately, after years of work and lots of support from Ranking Member Pingree, we were able to address this, and now valid cases within the Penobscot Nation's jurisdiction are being fully handled by our tribe. Ensuring that indigenous people report the crimes and feel safe and supported doing so is important because due to a lack of justice, which you have heard all about, victims can feel like it's not worth the time or effort in an already traumatic situation to take the needed steps.

(59:12)
Our own tribal law enforcement agencies need additional support. While tribal law enforcement funding has increased in recent years, the increases are far from meeting the actual level of need. One of the largest barriers is actually the growth of unrelated line items connected with contract support costs and 105( l) leases, which are taking up a larger and larger portion of Congress' allocation towards our budgets. It is critical that these be moved to the mandatory side of the budget so that funding increases go towards real program improvements and services, rather than fulfilling mandatory contract obligations. Funding the key programs for our people in the federal budget and upholding the trust responsibility helps keep our communities safe. It helps us in terms of health, stewardship of natural resources, public safety and keeping our communal and cultural connection strong. All of the appropriations decisions you all make in this room impact this crisis because in order for our people to protect each other and heal from past trauma, we need to have resources and means to survive.

(01:00:17)
Thank you so much for the invitation to come here today. I am deeply, deeply honored to be on this panel with these amazing women putting in such hard, heartbreaking work. [foreign language 01:00:31] Thank you very much.

Chairman Simpson (01:00:32):

Thank you and thank all of you for being here and we'll go to members' questions here in just a minute. But I want to tell you, I don't know if you know this Mary Jane, but I've been on this committee for 22 years. So I've been dealing with funding for Indian country for a number of years. Learned an awful lot from my Chairman here. So I'm involved. I listen to the news all the time. I knew nothing about this issue until about a year ago. I was watching Idaho reports and I believe it was you that was on the program, talking about murdered and missing indigenous women, and I'm sitting there and I'm stunned. And then I'm pissed off or PO'd after that, and said, "We've got to do something about this. We've got to do better."

(01:01:23)
But I think all five of you have demonstrated… This picture up here, when I first became Chairman of this committee the first time, I asked the Shoshone-Bannock tribe to give me something to hang on the wall, and they had one of their artists paint this and they explained to me, "This is a attempt to demonstrate." And I think in the narrative there, it says, "The strength of Native American women." I think you all just demonstrated it. Mr. Cole?

Chairman Tom Cole (01:01:55):

Thank you very much. I look at that picture and I think, well that's typical. You give the federal government something, you never get it back. First, I want to join the Chairman. Thank you for your testimony. That's difficult testimony. I know it's very difficult for you personally to talk about some of these experiences, but it's important. It's important for people to understand the reality. We can talk numbers and jurisdiction and statistics. There's nothing as powerful as a personal story to drive home a point. And so thank all of you for doing that.

(01:02:28)
I've just got some general questions that I would ask. Just start if I could, you can move across. And if it's something you don't care to comment about, that's fine too, but I'm very interested in your perspective. If you had to identify, you did a little bit of this, a couple of you in your testimony, what is the greatest needs that tribes are facing and what exactly should Congress do about it to specifically deal with this problem? And I'll start if I can with you, Eugenia.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (01:03:04):

Thank you for that question, Chairman Cole, and thank you for being a supporter of Indian country and for the work that you do. I do want to state that we have a booklet that we passed out. I know that there are some who believe that data is not really important. We just recently started collecting our data and we have that all within our booklets. And so if you turn to page 16, there's actually a picture of all of the people in our tribe who have gone missing or who are missing. Again, we don't have actual pictures of those who are murdered, but we do have the information within the booklet for those who have gone missing. There it is.

(01:03:52)
We also have information on there about the criminal cases that have been declined by the US Department of Justice. I think to answer your question, it's easy to say that money is going to solve everything, but in reality it's not. We get money to help assist with some of the issues. However, there's so much red tape involved, red tape at the federal level that make it almost impossible for us to spend money the way that we see fit. And I say that specifically because we are a 638 contract tribe, so we do receive 638 funding. However, there's so much limitations on those fundings that make it hard for us to be able to look at the issue that's in front of us and say, "We're going to use these funds towards this issue."

(01:04:43)
So again, I think it's easy for us to say that money's going to solve it, but I don't think it is. What I would like to ask this committee and for the new incoming members of Congress is to say that understanding is very important. Knowing who we are as a people is very important. Knowing that there are 575 tribes, separate tribes that are different from each other, that have different issues, that are treated differently, I think is really the first step in understanding. Just as you stated, Chairman Simpson, you didn't really know about the issues until just up a year ago. There's many issues within Indian country that we face that all contribute to what's happening with missing murdered indigenous women. And so I think I would have to say it's just that understanding and that education that everybody should have that responsibility I'm taking on, especially if you're going to be representing us as a people. Thank you.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:05:51):

Thank you very much. I will say this, just comment and then I'll move on. Obviously to Abigail, the numbers are important because we know domestic abuse and rape and violence occurs in every ethnicity and every part of the country, but when it's this staggeringly out of scale compared to other groups, and it's horrible no matter who it happens to, no matter what the circumstances, but it was the thing that caught my eye as I began and you actually had some of these statistics, Mr. Chairman, in your opening remarks. This is way out of proportion to what happens in other areas. So we clearly have a very unique problem. We clearly have a lack of jurisdiction in many cases and I still don't think we empower tribal law enforcement enough on their own lands, with their own people. That's just my personal opinion and we clearly have enormous resource problem. There is a differential here. It's not the same for everybody. So anyway, thank you for your work.

(01:06:51)
Abigail, if we may, your thoughts on what we should do? If Congress could do two or three things, where would you focus the effort?

Abigail Echo-Hawk (01:06:59):

So treaty and trust responsibility is not in because we stepped off of tribal land. And so a recognition again that enrolled members, federally recognized tribes, state recognized tribes, there is the necessity to ensure that our safety is a priority regardless. And those statistics, which some have been talked about here from my 2018 report that I co-authored, which we had no resources for, no funding, and in fact, I self-funded it with speaking fees I charged. With $20,000, we were able to assist in mobilizing the country to pass Savanna's Act and Not Invisible Act. What if we had $200,000? What if we had $2 million? So when it comes to ensuring that we have the appropriate collection of data, which is also a problem across the Department of Justice, and I'm adding in the Department of Defense, where there is not only a lack of data, but a lack of data standards in operability where they can share data across data systems is an area that definitely needs investment and accountability. In fact, there was an evaluation of DOD data specifically related to violence in the military in 2023, and they found that DOD was not in compliance with the basic standards of OMB in regards to race and ethnicity. So that is definitely an area of investment that is needed, and to also ensure somebody like Savanna Greywind isn't just used as a name on a piece of legislation, but the actual impacts of this crisis in urban settings are held up and given the appropriate resources that are needed, including getting law enforcement the appropriate trainings and working with a family who had a family member who was killed in the city, and worked with them to communicate with their tribe. They were able to get information, family communication that assisted them in the conviction of her killer. And then at the sentencing of the man who murdered her, the tribe was also given the opportunity, not just the family members, it's normally just family members and those impacted, the tribal counsel was able to make a statement.

(01:09:05)
So providing those resources and trainings and particularly on how to work with our tribal communities. I am a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. My tribe cares what happens to me and they deserve to know and to be a part of that. So allocation of resources, training and accountability to ensure that urban Indians are appropriately represented and recognizing treaty and trust responsibility did not end because I stepped off our reservation.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:09:29):

I think that's a hugely important point and this committee deals with this in the healthcare. It's one of the reasons why we have Indian healthcare clinics that aren't on tribal lands. Certainly that's the way it is in Oklahoma City for instance, and they do fantastic work, but you're exactly right. Just because you're not on a reservation doesn't mean that the government gets to get out of trust and treaty responsibilities. That's extraordinarily important. If we can, Cheryl, go on to you.

Cheryl Horn (01:10:00):

I guess if you asked me, where I work is with the families and with the courts, with the law enforcement. So recently, we have a man murdered. He missed the first time, so he pumped his gun and shot him again a second time. He feared for his life, according to the Feds who came to our reservation. And when our family started asking him questions, they walked out on him. They left the meeting and the family has questions. We all have questions and it doesn't hurt to answer them, but if they're not going to charge somebody for a murder, who's holding them accountable for not doing their job? If they're picking and choosing what cases, who's holding them accountable for letting people down? I'm right now advocating for our tribal courts to pick up these cases. We're only allowed to hold people in jail for one year and a lot of people don't deserve to be out around the public in one year. So you go down to our tribal courts and they're weak. Our tribal courts are weak.

(01:11:19)
My court couldn't even get a jury selection together for a jury trial. So I was picked on… I got a letter last week, five juries for five things and I asked, "Why?" Because they only have about a pool of 60 jurors on a reservation where we know each other already. So this is a court failure. This is oversight of the court's failure, oversight of the whole tribal government's failure when our courts aren't picking up these cases for our people. Selena was murdered by six people, six adults. One person was charged for endangering the welfare of a child and she wasn't even one of those six. She was the adult she had permission to go for a ride with, and the lady charged wasn't even with the ones who took my niece. Not one of them six people were charged for anything. Not even contributing to a child alcohol to her. They kept saying, "She was full of alcohol and she passed out." She had no alcohol in her. Her autopsy showed nothing.

(01:12:32)
So we get excuses and we get the door closed in our face. So I think I strongly, strongly hope that somewhere, somebody can put the hatchet down, put the hammer down on our tribal systems to pick up for our people, instead of just blaming the Feds because I worked both with the Feds and the law enforcement. So I asked law enforcement, " Why are they not taking them? What are they telling you?" And they said, "They're getting us on little things in the investigation, so we're doing better. We're handing these complete investigations over now and they're not prosecuting them," and nobody's held accountable. Nobody has to sit at the table with these families. They can walk out the door and I don't think that's okay.

(01:13:23)
So I really would like to see… This funding that comes down, I also want to see some change, some strictness in our tribal government. I want our tribal governments to get stronger in our tribal courts where we have the chance to. If it's murder, we got one year. If it's domestic violence, we got one year. Instead, they're waiting for three domestic violences to add up so they can turn it over to the Feds. So that is my wish is I could ask for more funding, but when we get more funding, are we going to mismanage it? I want to see more accountability from the federal government, all the way down to our tribal law enforcement, everybody at the table. Because if you're just walking out and slamming the door on families and nobody is asking you why you did that, you're going to continue to do that.

(01:14:21)
So I would just like things to get stronger on the level that I am to help because that's the barriers I'm running into. Like this girl that called me. She's just a young girl in her early, early 20s, was held at gunpoint and he's still free. Actually, I think he might be the one who drove a car that killed another man, if I think hard enough. So he's still free. The bottom line is he is still free in my community and that's what I want to see go away. I want accountability and I want people to do their jobs.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:14:57):

Thank you. Mary Jane?

Mary Jane Miles (01:15:01):

Thank you. I like to feel comfortable with the empty chair that Mickey put. Is that a shawl? And that's what we do in our celebrations and it made me feel accepted, and I just pray a lot as a minister that you would want to know us more and you would want to read our histories more. We travel to all the memorials for the Chief Joseph attempt to get into Canada. And it means so much for the younger people to understand what their forefathers have done for them and to set up a government system with the tribal government, much like the United States. So we look at you and we'd like you to look at us and see us as a people.

(01:15:58)
I liked your remark on the women up there. I saw a picture, a portrait of women in buckskin dresses, and underneath the caption was, "They are only as beautiful as their men take care of them." And the men was hunting and fishing for them, providing for them, and they were the backbone of the family unit. When reservation life came, there's nothing but clerical jobs. So we took over the bringing home the bacon and stripped them in of being the head of the family. So there's things that you need to know that we are about and we are not a stoic people. We have Indian humor and it goes from tribe to tribe. I can understand her humor or her humor. If she would tell me some joke, I would laugh my head off probably because it's similar. And so don't think we're stoic Indians because we're not. We enjoy life. We enjoy life, and the beauty of our culture is beautiful. I'm looking at her ring down there. It's beautiful and we have talents. So look at us and get inquisitive about how we live.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:17:26):

Thank you very much. I'm going to butcher. Pronounce that for me.

Molly (01:17:31):

Maulian.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:17:31):

Maulian.

Molly (01:17:31):

Yes.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:17:33):

Thank you very much.

Molly (01:17:35):

Perfect. So a lot of great things have been said. Probably going last, there's not too much to add. I had a couple of broad thoughts. This issue is it's not hard to hear our sharing humanity here and want to help and want to act and want to do things. This permeates a lot of other areas of tribal issues. I think when we're talking about tribal sovereignty and self-determination and natural resources and health, it's all connected. So I would encourage all members to, when you are approaching a tribal bill, remember this interaction and remember that everything we talked about is likely impacted by a lot of things you're seeing about tribal people, and this isn't existing in a silo. It's all interconnected.

(01:18:21)
And then I'll speak quickly to an extra barrier we have in Maine, the Representative Pingree is quite familiar with and I mentioned. Back in 1980, we had a very large case settled between the state because we had discovered that roughly two-thirds of the state, it was rightly ours and it was taken illegally because the treaties were never ratified. So I think this is tale as old as time for a lot of tribal nations, but we have this settlement that our leaders agreed to likely under some duress, the time of living and poverty, and a lot of these things we've talked about through the generations. They were promised a settlement dealing with land and money and we did get some land back and we settled this lawsuit, but the state was very adept at their negotiating and it's kept us oppressed and held back from our full experience as federally recognized tribal nations.

(01:19:17)
So should there ever be an opportunity to look at fixing this situation in the State of Maine and restoring our access to federal Indian law that right now we can have access to it, but there's a lot of games to be played with the state, that would help our people out quite a bit. So the Wabanaki Confederacy is Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Mi'kmaq, and we are heavily impacted by this restrictive settlement and it impacts this crisis as well.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:19:44):

Thank you very much. A lot of other questions, but I know there's a limit on time, so I'll yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Simpson (01:19:49):

Ms. Pingree.

Chairman Pingree (01:19:52):

Great. Thank you all. Really, I just appreciate your just extremely rich testimony so much and sharing your personal stories, but also the amazing work you've already been doing to try to work on this issue and you often didn't have the support or assistance that you need. And I was thinking of asking the same question as Chair Cole just because I think for us trying to get down to what can we get done at this moment in time? Clearly, it's a very multilayered issue and a lot of things that we have to do. So I appreciate all the things you've already covered from the data, the lack of law enforcement or funding for law enforcement. I think when we had our witness day, it seems to me it was something like 13% of the need that was actually being funded by the federal government. It was under 20% at any rate. So no community could operate at that level of funding. And so I think we can't discount that, the number of investigators and just all of the things.

(01:20:50)
Really appreciated the thoughts about the specific alert system. We all now see on our phones an alert if someone wanders off who has dementia or all those things all the time, or a missing child. And I had never really thought about how the specificity of that would also bring a lot of attention to this particular problem. And I think as others have said, the magnitude of this problem is a little understood by most people. And as women, we have a lot of concerns about domestic violence and rape crisis and all the other things that happen to women. But to know that this is orders of magnitude worse and it's historic and it's just not changing.

(01:21:33)
I think the other two questions I might ask you to just go into a little bit more as a group is this jurisdictional issue because I think that confuses many of us and obviously there've been court cases that it made it even cloudier, and then it's different from tribe to tribe. So I think maybe if you all want to comment about that a little bit more. And also just wanted to appreciate what Chairman Cole said as well about the urban issue because I think we often don't separate out this and you think, "Oh, well, you're in an urban area, you have excellent law enforcement. It's not the same as a tribe where there's jurisdictional issues," but the fact is if people aren't properly trained or don't understand, the stories are horrific.

(01:22:11)
So I'm just going to start with Director Bryant. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your own personal story, and then I'll ask all of you to go down through this, but I'd be interested in your thought about the tribal courts and the jurisdictional issues. And if you just want to take that one step further, I appreciate you pointing out that the main tribes, as so many different tribes have different constraints on them, but ours, we feel is uniquely difficult and challenging. And how VAWA was a great example because we assume that's one thing that has been really important. Just describe a little bit more either the hoops that we had to go through or that is an example of the federal funding that doesn't naturally come to our tribes in the way it does to others? So asking you that, and then asking all of you just any comments you have about the jurisdictional issues?

Molly (01:22:59):

Sure. And I'm not sure if this is on.

Speaker 3 (01:23:02):

If the light's on, it's on.

Molly (01:23:03):

There we go. Got it. So yes, it's a great example to talk about the federal Violence Against Women Act. So the jurisdictional issues we talk about, a big part of this is before VAWA, if you had a domestic violence situation on tribal land, of course. So keeping in mind that inequity there in urban areas. If the perpetrator was not a tribal member, you often couldn't bring that into tribal court. And that added to this level of confusion where a lot of courts were like, "Well, those are tribal people, that's probably not our thing." And then tribal courts were like, "Well, we don't have the jurisdiction here." So that's hard. That's traumatizing to victims, dragging them around different places and having them retell these stories, and then not getting justice.

(01:23:47)
So the tribes in Maine, because of the Settlement Act, there's a provision in there that says if a law passes at the federal level meant to benefit federally recognized tribal nations, the state can decide at any time that they don't want us to have access to that law if it impacts their jurisdiction. So in the 2015 reauthorization of VAWA, the Penobscot Nation was ready to start handling these cases. We assumed that this law would apply to us. We actually got chosen to be part of a pilot program nationwide, and then the state stepped in and said, "Slow down. We think this might impact our jurisdiction. We don't want you having access to this law." And then it took seven years of advocacy, of lobbying, of working at the state level and the federal level to be mentioned in the most recent reauthorization of VAWA.

(01:24:38)
And in that time of the domestic violence incidences at Penobscot Nation, we got zero convictions because they were all getting kicked out to state courts and not going through the right process and zero justice. And those are just the crimes that are reported and someone is charged and arrested, not even speaking about everything that else is going on.

(01:24:58)
So that's one example of the specific barrier that we are facing and looking at. There's been 150 or so federal pieces of legislation that have passed since 1980 that we've had the same issues with. Some of them we've been able to work around and use, and a lot of them have been blocked by the state. So we're working at the state and federal level right now to fix this, and this heavily impacts this crisis when we're talking about VAWA.

Chairman Pingree (01:25:24):

Thank you so much.

Molly (01:25:25):

Thank you.

Chairman Pingree (01:25:26):

Anyone else want to comment or do you want to just go down? Any thoughts you have about the complicated jurisdictional issues?

Mary Jane Miles (01:25:32):

I just want to speak about VAWA too. I went to a conference with a judge of our tribal court and she had wanted me to go hear what the people were saying, what the native people were saying. And most of the Indian women there, my age and older, were really hopping mad because they wanted to know how this came about, who wrote it, and had they ever been on a reservation? And they said, "I don't think so." So that was really an angry time for a lot of the native older women. And I think they're the ones that always speak out too, because it's really confusing to be stopped by a cop on the reservation.

(01:26:26)
And I was stopped for speeding and it was a tribal cop, and I knew him. I saw him grow up and everything. I said, "Do you have jurisdiction here or is this a state highway or a county highway?" And he was really irritated with me because I was pushing his buttons, but that's how confusing it is. And then the case that I reported in my report when the perpetrator was taken to jail,

Mary Jane Miles (01:27:01):

Then they're taken to the federal court. So they're talking about are we being tried twice? Indian law on each reservation is different. And I like the remark about the urban Indians with the treaty. They still retain their treaties because I've been in the Los Angeles area for a while as well, and I wondered that too. Don't I have sovereignty as a first tribal person? So we have a lot of questions that need to be studied. Thank you.

Cheryl Horn (01:27:39):

I guess I will speak from criminal jurisdiction because that's kind of where I'm at. In Montana, we have tribal, county, state, and federal. So with my niece, Selena, she was last seen in Billings with a group, and then she left and she went into Big Horn County. So you have two people. Also, keep in mind that none of these jurisdictions want this case. Keep that in mind. With our last recent person missing from our reservation. And if you don't know, there's a thing called border towns and border counties. So he goes over to the border town and that's the last place he's seen. Well then every time I went to the tribal cops and the tribal investigator, they blame the county. And I go to county, I don't get no answers so. With my niece Selena, I guess like I said, there was one charge and it went back into Billings.

(01:28:36)
I never did get any charges, not one charge on the six people who killed her. And that was put on Big Horn County. And I guess from then on, me and Big Horn County kind of rubbed elbows and whatever else you would say, because I want to speak up. I want these jurisdictions clearly laid out, but I don't want jurisdiction used as an excuse to not do it, which I'm seeing in Montana, which I see even from my own tribal investigators and police. "Oh, he was in town." And that's it. That was it for them. They stopped the search. Only people searching on the reservations was the family. So I guess to use it as an excuse is becoming common. So I would like these lines drawn a little clearer. And like I said, I really want my tribal court to be stronger. We need our courts systems to be stronger.

(01:29:37)
When it comes to county, state, and federal, I have to hear, "Oh, we only take slam dunk cases. Oh, this judge will only take slam dunk." That's not what I want to hear. And that's not what I want to relay to a family. So I guess when it comes to jurisdictions, I watch too much TV, number one, where people want crime solved. So jurisdiction needs to be clearly stated and I would love to see them all work together because that's what's needed. That's how my niece was found. She wasn't found by Big Horn County. She wasn't found by Billings. She wasn't even found by the [inaudible 01:30:14] because we hadn't had any proof she went to the res, but they offered their services. And by us not leaving, Big Horn County was forced to ask for Operation Lady Justice's help.

(01:30:29)
But this also goes back to a comment I heard earlier about not knowing about MMIP. In 2018 was my first niece. Nobody heard me when I Googled MMIP, I was like, [inaudible 01:30:43] was ribbon skirts from a newly formed task force that was just formed. So in 2020, I knew I had to be loud for Selena. I knew I had to do everything I could. I went to the social media, I went to all the news outlets and the local station wouldn't cover us, the Billings, because that wouldn't do a story. So about three, four days in, I got Wyoming News, their news, their radio station that goes all over. A reporter from the New York Times heard it. So I had the New York Times at this rest area before I had the local newspaper.

(01:31:24)
And later that day when the local newspaper sent out their reporter, I told her, "You tell your editor to copy the story from the New York Times." And if he wants a story at this time, families were coming to me at the rest area. I pointed to a man that was missing his daughter in Billings. I said, "You go over there and talk to him, get his story out because I got my story out. I got the New York Times. That man standing over there needs the Billings [inaudible 01:31:52]." So jurisdiction, it can be a tricky, tricky game, but I do not like it used as an excuse not to do their job.

Speaker 4 (01:32:01):

Thank you.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (01:32:04):

The maze of jurisdiction has created an opportunity for predators to utilize it to ensure that they can move from reservation to reservation community to community. We call it res hopping in the work that I do. I worked with a family, we found out this individual had moved across five different reservations, avoiding prosecution as domestic violence perpetrator because of the maze of jurisdiction that was not allowing for the arrest and prosecution of a non-Indian on tribal land. And in the fifth reservation, he killed her. And so the utilization of predators who have identified this opportunity, because that's what it is, and we have to look at why was it created.

(01:32:44)
Why does this maze of jurisdiction maintain itself in a way that has not only exasperated the issue but allowed it to continue in a way that all the statistics that we're all talking about going to continue to grow unless we address this maze of jurisdiction on our tribal lands? Cases of individuals, for example, there was a case in Montana where the young woman was placed about 800 feet off of the reservation and then they couldn't decide she'd been killed on the reservation, but her body was found off the reservation. So whose jurisdiction was it? And they fought about jurisdiction instead of investigating the case. And we think that this only applies on the reservations.

(01:33:26)
And I must say that is a huge issue and it must be addressed. I'm working with a family right now who had a loved one who was beaten and left for dead underneath a bus stop in a city. And four months later, her family contacts me and my organization and asks us to help because they had not heard anything from the police in that jurisdiction. The city police. When we reached out and we talked to them and they're like, "Oh, well, we didn't know whose jurisdiction it was because the bus stops are the county's jurisdiction. If she had been found six inches outside of that bus stop, it would've been the city."

(01:33:59)
But the city is the one who discovered her body and then transported it to the hospital where five days later her mother watched her die holding her hand. And it took them four months and a small native non-profit working at a tribe in another state to push them towards assigning an investigator who by then most of the evidence was gone and her death was ruled undetermined because there was nothing left for them to investigate. This maze of jurisdiction is an excuse. We published a report in 2018 looking at urban native women and found that 94% of them had been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Only 8% of those who reported it in those urban jurisdictions saw the conviction of those that assaulted them.

(01:34:40)
Instead, they faced victim blaming of what was she drinking? Was she a runaway? All of the things that many women face. This maze of jurisdiction is rampant and used by predators on the reservations and then it is used as an excuse by those in the urban areas to simply not pay attention to those they don't care about and the ones they don't care about look like me and the rest of these women sitting here today in front of you.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (01:35:09):

Thank you for asking that question. In terms of jurisdiction, that was one of the issues that I spoke about in regards to what is happening here in Indian country. As I stated earlier, at the very beginning, when cases begin, usually legally, it's where the crime was committed. At least that's what we're taught. I did go to law school. I was a former prosecutor for two years before becoming an elected official for my nation. But that's what we're taught for criminal cases, is where did the crime begin or where was it committed? But in Indian country, I think it was said already before, it's basically it's tribal people. So it's tribal court or it's tribal people, it becomes a tribal issue.

(01:36:04)
They pass that buck around, kind of just pushing it back and forth. I like to see our law enforcement work together and to communicate with each other and to communicate with victims and to communicate with families. The jurisdictional issues have really just become an excuse, an excuse to not do the job. And I really like the statement made earlier about holding people accountable. Why are we not doing that? Because I think that that's something that I would like to see. I grappled with the idea of sharing this story, but I feel like it needs to be said now. When I was 17 years old, I took a coke from a man and I woke up in his shack tied up. I couldn't see. I couldn't see him.

(01:37:08)
I was in his shack for about maybe seven to nine days tied up. He raped me repeatedly. He beat me. He broke my ribs, broke my cheekbones. He tried to carve his initials into my pubic area. I was 17 years old. I had just graduated from high school. And because they didn't know, because I didn't know where I was being kept, where the shed was located, they could never identify the jurisdiction. And the man who I knew, I knew this man, I said his name, they never prosecuted him. I was 17 years old. And the worst part I think of this story is today I represent this man in my community and this man has reached out to me on two occasions asking me for help.

(01:38:29)
Now you guys are elected officials. You know that we have a responsibility to the people who have elected us. We have a responsibility to all of our people. And when we're talking about the jurisdictional issues, I think back, because I repressed that memory for over 20 years. I never talked about it because I was told you don't talk about those things. I never said anything. I never shared my story with people. But I've gone back and I've questioned, was it the jurisdictional issue? Because I remember they kept asking me, "Where is this shed located?" I don't know where it was located. I was tied up. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know…

(01:39:21)
I just remember falling in and out of consciousness. That's all I remember. I remember the smell of mulch. I remember Red Hot Chili Peppers being played in the background, which to this day, I can't stand Red Hot Chili Peppers or the spell of mulch. But I don't know why my case was never prosecuted. I wish I could say that this was why it was never… They never communicated with me. When I asked for a copy of the police report, they never did. I was missing for over seven days and nobody came looking for me. Nobody asked where I was at. In my community with my family, with my parents, they trusted the police. When the police told them that maybe I just wanted to just get up and just leave.

(01:40:15)
They believed them. They believed that there was no missing person. They didn't believe that I was taken or that anything bad was happening to me because they trusted them. And in many of our Indian communities, that's how many of our elders are. They trust the police because that's what we're taught. That's what we're told. We're told to trust, to trust the government, to trust those in leadership who are making decisions for us. So the question that you ask about jurisdiction, what I can say is that a lot of cases don't get… They don't ever get to see justice because nobody wants to work the cases. Everybody wants to say it belongs to somebody else or it's their problem, or it's just a case that just you get to say that it's been closed.

(01:41:14)
So I think to answer your question, I wish we had law enforcement where everybody took their jobs seriously. I wish we had people who cared. And I wish we had people who could ask questions when we go to them and not make it sound like it's our fault or that we wanted to leave or that our case is not important. So I think that communication is really important, not only between law enforcement, but communication with the victims and communication with the families. And these jurisdictional issues with border towns, with counties, with states, with Indian country. It's always that question, who has jurisdiction? And that shouldn't be the question.

(01:42:02)
The question should be, how can we help? And who did this? Let's hold them accountable. Those should be the questions that we should be asking. Thank you.

Chairman Pingree (01:42:13):

Well, thank you so much and thank you for sharing that story and so deeply personal. Thank you all really for… I mean, I'm so sorry that you all have such stories to share about yourselves or your family members and I really appreciate you bringing that to us. And in particular, your last story. Thank you for choosing to become an elected official and to help others and be a lawyer given your experiences. And I'm just so, so sorry that happened to you and to happen to all of you. So I hope we can all do something today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairman (01:42:46):

Mr. Ellzey.

Chairman Tom Cole (01:42:48):

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing. It's evident to everybody how much you care about this. I'd like to thank our panel for being here today. Mary Jane, you mentioned something about stoicism. I'm glad you brought that up because no more will I misconstrue stoicism for self-control. And when I look at this panel here talking about this subject that has been such a problem, a crisis for your people for so long. That it requires self-control to maintain composure when talking about something that doesn't seem to be fought for.

(01:43:26)
And as I look in this room, and every time we have hearings like this, the room is full of people who are in self-control but not stoicism because they feel that there is no justice for their people specifically on this subject. But in others as well. Unseen, unheard uncared for and forgotten, but you're not. We all care. And I'm honored to be on this committee. I don't have any tribes in my district, but we do have 20,000 urban tribal members in the Dallas-Fort worth area. I'm glad the FCC has taken a start, but it's time to do better. And what I would like to see is… My family's not coming to the inauguration on January 20 because I don't know what's going to happen.

(01:44:17)
And the reason I told them I don't want come to an inauguration is I don't know what's going to happen and I'm going to be in warrior mode. My colleague here, 20 years in the Navy, I know I'll be in warrior mode that day, more interested in protecting my family than watching an inauguration. So I said, "I can't be a good daddy, husband and host if I'm in warrior mode." And what we need now is across all tribal lands. And Mary Jane, when you mentioned that the reservation system has taken the provider mission of your men away from you, this should be their mission. This should be our mission. And their mission is warrior mode to protect your people. And we need to get rid of the cross-jurisdictional problems.

(01:45:07)
If we only have 218 on 227,000, they need to be volunteering and getting in warrior mode so that you have 600, 700, 800 to where people can't come onto the res. Where evil goes, where there is no prevention of crime, evil will go and predators will survive and evil must be fought. So I want to see men of all types standing up and volunteering to be warriors for your people. And until we can get the notification system fixed, that's job one. Let's get this notification system fixed along with tracking capabilities, along with air support, 27,000 miles. We need to have air support for you so that we can track down people who are missing.

(01:45:58)
We got people in the air so we can be looking for these folks. Training for law enforcement, tribal lands wide. Hiring those cops and volunteers and then fixing the cross deputization. And so we need guys to get in warrior mode everywhere. The attention that this committee, subcommittee and in lame duck session where there's really not a whole lot going on. I want to work with my fellow warriors on this committee to make sure that this problem comes to an end. And I've asked my staff to put 20 of the most recent missing women and children on a poster, which we'll make available to whomever wants it.

(01:46:47)
If you don't know about these problems and it's not in the media, it's not on the national news, it's not anywhere, you don't know it exists. But we do now. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Justice should be served soon. And I look forward to working with my fellow warriors, men and women on this committee to help make that happen. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman (01:47:19):

Thank you Congressman Ellzey. Ms. McCollum.

Ms. McCollum (01:47:23):

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'd like to thank you and Ranking Member [inaudible 01:47:27] for doing this. Chairman Cole has left. We both serve on the defense committee. And Ms. Hawk, I have not been happy, Miss Echo-Hawk, excuse me, your whole name deserves to be said. I'm not happy with the way the Department of Defense has been handling sexual assault cases. And so you've just given more fuel to my fire. So thank you for pointing that out. And I know Chairman Cole, who's on the committee with me, heard you loud and clear as well as Chairman Calvert, who's the chair right now, was also a member of this committee where we worked non-partisanly on tribal affairs. I want to just take a second to lead up and paint a question to all of you.

(01:48:15)
But you in particular, Miss Echo-Hawk. Minnesota has been working very hard to lead on efforts on this. This is a crisis that I've been aware of since the seventies, since I was a child. People did talk about it quietly between the tribal nations in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And I was very fortunate to have tribal friends as well as my grandmother trading as she liked to put it with tribal women and hearing their stories. Our lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band, has been an advocate in 2019 along with Senator Mary Kunesh, who's in my constituency. The first indigenous woman elected to the Minnesota Senate.

(01:49:02)
They chair the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman task force, which delivered a report to the state legislature highlighting some of the same heartbreaking, infuriating statistics that our witnesses shared today. And I won't break down Minnesota's numbers. One is too many. Period. The report resulted in the development of a permanent office in the state for missing and murdered indigenous relatives. But even with the focus of the crisis in Minnesota, and by the way, Minnesota's paying for this. We're not getting money from the federal government to do this. This is our legacy. This is our wrong, and this is something we're working together as one Minnesota with Governor Walz and leadership.

(01:49:53)
We're looking for permanent solutions. And that's the same thing that the chairman and the ranking member are asking from all of us again today. But jurisdiction comes up over and over and over again. And here is one of our challenges with jurisdiction for what you have touched upon in your report. Thank you. The report from Navajo Nation. Your funding is spread across all over. So we have some funding that we can put into what we do for tribal nations, primarily healthcare and education, but some other things in here too. But you also have funding in the committee that oversees the Justice Department. You have funding in housing.

(01:50:42)
We need more funding for families in crisis, whether it's domestic violence or just housing in general to reduce some of the stress that tribal nations and their communities are facing. Even transportation, we've heard over and over again about how many miles of bad roads we have. Some of that's in our jurisdiction, but some of it's in the Department of Transportation system. So one of the things that I've been working on since I got to Congress and we've been making improvements, but I think you could help us make improvements even faster with your voice. We need a whole of Indian country document for your budget. So a tribal nation knows this portion's from here, this portion's from here, that's portions from there.

(01:51:35)
So we can knit it together, including just broadband and better communications, which is in, believe it or not, the Ag bill, which the two of us have worked on a little bit. So how do you stitch anything whole of government when your funding is spread out all over? I think we can be of help to paint a better picture with that. But we need you also to put the pressure that's been put on the Bush administration, the Obama administration, of the Trump administration, the Biden administration, of the Trump administration again. We make headwinds with OMB, but we're not where we need to be for you yet. And it would be so helpful for us as well. And then there's the other jurisdiction.

(01:52:20)
I'm a border state. North Dakota, South Dakota, tribally-enrolled members going back and forth. Urban, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth. We know that there's problems. We're working on it, but there's also problems with jurisdiction with the Coast Guard, with women who are trafficked and abused out of Lake Superior. And I know the same thing's happening out of Lake Michigan as well too. So we need to open up this jurisdiction and think big when we're talking about it, including the Coast Guard. And then working with Canada, the provinces and the First Nations. Someone goes back and forth between International Falls into Canada for France. They're traveling all the time.

(01:53:07)
We cannot let jurisdiction be a barrier. So I thank you for you pointing this out, but I want to take this down a slightly different track because I want to get this right when we do do this. So I'm going to take a second and just read a little history. I'm a social studies teacher. Our territorial governor Ramsey. He served as the mayor of St. Paul. He did a lot of really nasty things. He even served up here in the House. But when he came to Minnesota, he was in his position of governor and superintendent of affairs in 1891. He played a key role in obtaining Dakota leaders. I live on the land of the Dakota people.

(01:53:59)
And he did a lot of things, but he also led to a conflict in 1862, a group of Dakota Hungary with what they were entitled to, locked up not being provisions, not being put out by Governor Ramsey. Led to what we call the Sioux Uprising and the Sioux right to uprise. Minnesota has the largest history of hanging Native Americans after that uprising. But one of the things that came out of all of that was the term redskin and bounties placed on Redskins. So I have worked with tribal leaders and allies for a long time about eliminating the term red. So when I heard you refer to code red, I thought, "I wonder what my tribes would think about that."

(01:54:57)
So I'm not asking for a big discussion on that right now, but that's the connotation it even has for me as a non-Native American, to use that and to hear that term in Minnesota. So we need to do something to kind of separate things out. But I would hope that members of Congress would reflect on your choices and your wishes for what we call that. And it needs to be universal so that when you go from state to state, in my five state area, Wisconsin, North Dakotas, South Dakota, even into Canada, that people know what that means when that goes on. And we do need that because it will not only, I believe, hopefully save lives, but it will also bring constant attention to what is happening.

(01:55:49)
To my sisters who testified today, my sisters in the audience, my sisters here, and our great allies. Thank you for today.

Ms. McCollum (01:56:00):

This is personal for me for some of the reasons some of you shared, but it's also personal for me because I have a very close family member who has worked and chosen… we laugh about her taking a vow of poverty to work with domestic violence victims. To your point, you need to take care of yourself because, I stress, this person needs to take care of herself. She was so frustrated with jurisdictional and things happening. She decided to move into the court system and work with families. You're not alone, but there's so much work to be done. Miigwech.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (01:56:42):

Thank you so much for those comments and especially in the naming convention, which is one of the recommendations that we've made to the FCC is that anytime you are making an effort in Indian country, appropriate tribal consultation is needed, which is why the Red Alert, which is making reference to the red hand over individuals' faces is appropriate in the state of Washington. The Feather Alert was appropriate in the state of California, but what does that look like at the national level?

(01:57:10)
And the only way we'll be able to determine that is through tribal consultation that has begun, but needs to be, again, continued out because an alert system like this has the ability to do what we haven't been able to do. And that is touch both the reservations, the urban areas, the rural areas, and offer an opportunity to ensure that our loved ones have visibility when they go missing. And the naming convention is very important and must be done in tribal consultation to meet all of the needs exactly that you just stated. So thank you.

Ms. McCollum (01:57:42):

And Mr. Chair, I will have to excuse myself for a defense meeting shortly, but I have staff here and I'm going to watch you on the YouTube channel, so thank you.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (01:57:55):

Can I say just something really quickly? In terms of what you asked for, I guess all of the weaving of funds that we do receive, what I can tell you is that I've been keeping close watch on the Department of Interior's funding when it comes to public safety and justice. We know that in the last budget year, the US Department of Interior received 14.8 billion. 2.46 billion, went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is where our public safety and justice within Indian country falls under that particular line item. There are 164 self-determination tribes in 33 locations where Office of Justice Services is located.

(01:58:38)
That 555.56 million gets divided into criminal investigations and police services, detention and corrections, inspection and internal affairs, law enforcement, Indian police academy, tribal justice support, law enforcement, program management, facility operations and maintenance, and then to tribal courts. What we can do is what we have been advocating for is, to look at the secretarial amount that is actually within the law. It's the base funding that's determined for public safety and justice within Indian country. And it's something that we have been advocating for. And if Chairman Cole was still here, he'd probably be shaking his head because we've had many conversations with him to ask how do we change that secretarial amount, which will allow us to change the amount that we receive in Indian country for public safety and justice.

(01:59:32)
That is just for the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That's not including Indian Health Services. That's not including the US Department of Justice. That's not including any other agencies out there. I keep close watch on this because as chairwoman for Law and Order Committee, our funding comes out of the BIA funding. And there's concern right now with the new administration coming in and the proposal to get rid of a lot of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or cross the board, a lot of employees within different agencies, if the Department of Interior or Bureau of Indian Affairs were to receive less money, that would be less money for public safety and justice across Indian country.

(02:00:14)
So I ask all of you here to speak up for the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Office of Justice Services, and ask that those funds stay where they're at or that it increase so that we can address public safety and justice in Indian country. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:00:33):

Mr. Edwards.

Chairman Tom Cole (02:00:36):

Wow, there's a lot to talk about. First of all, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate you bringing this hearing to the forefront and helping us all better understand the issue. Like you, a year ago, I had no idea that this was an issue nearly to the degree that I now understand. It's just out of my circles and not recognized within the folks that I interact with. So thank you for bringing it to the forefront. To all of you thank you very much for taking the time to be here and for being brave and sharing your stories. I know that is very difficult. I could hear the difficulty in the tone in all of your voices at some point, and I believe that all the tribal nations are extremely fortunate that they have folks like you willing to advocate on the behalf of Indian tribes everywhere.

(02:01:44)
The issue of jurisdiction's come up a number of times. I'm kind of a simple thinker and I've been scratching my head through this, wondering why that's such a complicated topic. I've got a couple of ideas I'll be sharing with my staff to see how we can resolve that very easily. Another thing that might not be as simple, you and… I can't read your name tag. I'm sorry. Yeah, so Eugenia leaned over to me and was sharing some data in this well put together document during some of the testimony and pointing out the number of cases that have not been prosecuted. I'd just be curious on a couple things from any of you that might have a perspective. What are some of the reasons that you're aware that cases might not be prosecuted and who would be responsible for that? I know in the state of North Carolina we have elected prosecutors that we would hold accountable. If they were not to do their job, is it something similar in all tribal nations? Is it different from nation to nation? What efforts are being made locally inside of your tribal nations to spotlight those folks that refuse, for whatever reason, to prosecute the folks that are committing these crimes? It's a lot to unpack there, but any perspective that you've got to help us understand would be useful.

Speaker 5 (02:03:36):

Go ahead, Gina.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (02:03:37):

Thank you so much for asking that question, Congressman, Edwards, I really appreciate it. And North Carolina, actually, you guys, you do have some tribes within North Carolina that are state recognized. So I think that you probably do have many American Indians that you do represent, you just don't know it, but you will. So within the booklet-

Chairman Tom Cole (02:04:00):

They're right back there in the corner. I know where they're [inaudible 02:04:03].

Eugenia Charles-Newton (02:04:05):

Chairman, on page 23, Navajo did put together our data and statistics. And again, I'm very much about numbers. I like to see numbers and I like to be able to take a look at those numbers and cross them out or lower those numbers. That's one of my duties as an elected official. But I can say for Navajo, from 2016 to 2024, we had 525 cases that were declined for federal prosecution. And in terms of understanding the jurisdictional issues within Indian country, their crimes are committed on reservations, on federally recognized tribal nations. Those get prosecuted at the federal level unless they're a public law 280 state, then the state does have jurisdiction in those cases to prosecute. But many times, many of our go unprosecuted, as is the case here with the Navajo nation. To answer your question, within the booklet, you'll see that 172 cases were declined and those cases dealt with child sexual assault or abuse. 116 was assault, which also included aggravated assault and I guess resulting in serious bodily injury with a deadly or dangerous weapon. And the reasons for declination, and this is according to the United States Attorney's office, there were 182 cases, sorry, my glasses are getting a little bit dirty here. 182 of those cases were declined for insufficient evidence or lack of evidence. And in that time, the US Attorney's Office failed in many cases to inform our law enforcement of the lack of evidence. 205 of those cases, they were declined for insufficiently confidence in likelihood of convictions.

(02:06:12)
What we're seeing within Indian country in the US Attorney's Office is that Indian country is turning into a stepping stone. So many of the attorneys do go to the US Department of Justice. They do start off there in Indian country. They like to see their likelihood of convictions, the numbers at a higher rate so that they can get a better job somewhere else. And so many of our cases get pleaded out without any communication with families. So that is within the booklet that we did provide. And this is just for Navajo Nation.

(02:06:46)
Every tribe does get letters for cases that are not prosecuted. And we've, again, just barely started collecting this information. And right now it's being collected in a booklet because we don't have the infrastructure in place. But all of that information is within the booklet. And that's how I can answer on behalf of Navajo. But thank you, Congressman Edwards, for asking that question.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (02:07:12):

In the urban communities, we've seen no accountability at all. We are simply a population that people don't know exists in their cities, that they don't realize that the declining of prosecution and the victim blaming that happens that allows for excuses. So for example, the story I told, the woman who was beaten left under a bus stop and died five days later, there would've been no accountability for even starting an investigation unless her tribe hadn't reached out to a friend of a friend who knew me. This cannot depend on one person. This cannot depend on one organization. It must be a systematic approach that upholds accountability.

(02:07:53)
The one report we have that I said again that of those that reported their assaults, only 8% of them saw a conviction. And there's no accountability as to why. Why is there not resources dedicated? Why isn't this paid attention to? But we do know the stereotypes that have existed in this country going from Pocahontas who was a trafficked woman who died in captivity, is what this country thinks about native people that has helped build up these stereotypes. And then in instances where our people are suffering as a result of the trauma they've experienced and they treat their wounds through alcohol, through opiates, through behaviors that may have them living on the streets, that additional stigma attaches to them.

(02:08:39)
And we see absolutely no accountability for it. It is something that we have been calling for and no one has been willing to take up the cause to say all law enforcement, regardless of where they reside, are responsible for the public safety of everybody in their communities. And that absolutely includes the First People of this land, American Indian, Alaska, Natives, and the indigenous people of this land and territories.

Cheryl Horn (02:09:08):

I guess I have named 15 people. Selena got a misdemeanor charge against her perpetrators and Kaysera, her family's still fighting. She went missing before Selena. And so when Selena went missing, they told me Selena's number 28 in Big Horn County that is missing. 28. You know what I said? "I don't believe that. I think there's more. There's more mothers sitting at their table waiting for the sheriff to come up and update them." Out of those 15 I named, they come from different jurisdictions, state, tribal, federal. Kaysera's family was recently returned her jawbone. Big Horn County returned her jawbone to her when they illegally cremated her.

(02:10:09)
Where'd that jawbone sit for all these years? Whose desk? Whose drawer? Who had a jawbone that it pops up all these years later and this family has to go through it again. You get a jawbone back. What is that going to do to you? That's going to tear you up. So they had to go through it all again because somebody found her jawbone. I cannot fathom that at all. So out of those 15 people, we got one misdemeanor, endangering the welfare of a child. Selena's got six. Kaysera's got one. Kaimani's got a group. Casey is unknown. Freeman was his wife. Kaz was a group. Thomasine was her boyfriend. Preston was a cop. Claiborne was a cop. All of these people are known in our communities and nobody has been held accountable.

(02:11:09)
So it goes back to trauma. We're going to go re-trauma, everybody. We're trauma-ing our children right now because our court systems are trauma-ing their parents, their grandparents. It's a trickle effect when they tell us what not to do. My granddaughters, we don't even let them go in the store alone. My niece or my daughter in California, she messages me. "I'm scared." In California, I can't help her. I'm in Montana and I empower her. That's all I can do is empower.

(02:11:42)
Tell them, "You have this. You have the strength in you. You're important, you're needed. You matter." So just jurisdiction again is an excuse and it's hard to explain that to a family.

Mary Jane Miles (02:12:01):

I had never thought of that as being an excuse. Thank you. And I just want to go back to VAWA, when I first was introduced to VAWA. The judge that I traveled with, I was asking questions like the other old ladies were asking too. And the question I had asked was, well, what happened to this case where they took a young girl from the… well, she was legal to get into the only bar we have on the reservation. A couple of white men came and took her in a van, took her off the reservation, kept her for a week and raped her repeatedly, bullied her. And now she's in a state that is pitiful.

(02:12:55)
What happened? They went to the state penitentiary. Why? Because it was off the reservation. So these jurisdictions bother me when they're used for, "They should be in a federal prison." So I feel that we need to look at the laws on the reservation and work with the tribal people. It's going to be a long haul. But I just sometimes think I don't even know. Like I told the story about the little tribal police chasing me. I don't even know who has jurisdiction. I'm 84 years old and I should know, but I don't. So that's a biggie that needs to be worked on.

Molly (02:14:03):

So I think a lot of good, reasonable people would look at this and think there's a baseline for justice. There's a baseline that people are human beings and deserve full treatment under the law no matter who they are or where they come from. And that's not our reality. I think Abigail did a beautiful job talking about these specific examples of where this traumatic history has led some of our people. They fall through the cracks and nobody cares enough to pick them back up in any sense besides our communities, especially in the justice system.

(02:14:41)
And I think back to a few weeks ago when President Biden apologized to our tribal nations for the United States Boarding School Policy. That's not ancient history. I'm 40 years old and that's a generation or two above me. This isn't a long, long time ago. It was policy for the United States government to come into our communities, take children as young as two or three, take them away to these schools away from their families, abuse them for speaking their language or honoring their culture. It's horrific what we've been through. So as we sort through that and we're also losing people in these ghastly crimes, that's a lot for us to shoulder as you've heard today. We're sharing this with each other today as much as we're sharing it with you, we're spreading our burden out right now and it's a beautiful thing. But when we think about these things are terrible, how can this be going on? It begs the question to look deeper into why these crimes happened in the first place and why nobody knows about it. And it's so much more than laws and jurisdiction. It's where we've been placed in society, in our indigenous homelands in the country that we're serving to protect even before we had the right to vote. We love this place and we need it to love us back.

Chairman Simpson (02:16:17):

Thank you all. This is kind of unusual in that we generally don't have hearings in November during the lame duck as you said. But this is obviously a vitally important issue to all of us. We want to work with you to make sure that we can address it. And it brings up many questions and only some of them are funding. I keep hearing the jurisdictional issue. I will tell you that first time I was chairman of this committee, I bought a book and it was the rights of tribes and Indians. And it's about this thick. And you go through and it talks about the different things. And I understood how PL- 280 tribes came about and all this kind of stuff.

(02:17:02)
And then you get to the chapter on law enforcement. I've probably read it seven or eight times and still don't know what the hell it says. And then you realize that every tribe is different. It's like having the same issues in Boise, Idaho as you have in Shelley, Idaho. Those two communities are substantially different. One's 250,000, one's a thousand. So their needs are different. And that's the same with tribes. But there ought to be a basic way to figure… We shouldn't have to figure out whose jurisdiction this is if someone is missing or whatever.

(02:17:42)
And you brought up an interesting question or an interesting thought, Abigail. When I'm sitting here listening to this and I'm going, just because we put more money into tribal justice, that doesn't mean it's going to help tribal members in urban areas because that's going to go to the reservations and their tribal systems most likely. So we need to re-examine this. And as Ms. McCollum said, we need a whole of Indian country. And that's more than what this committee can do. What we can do is focus attention on it and when we do our appropriation bills, concentrate on it and work with the authorizing committees to see how we need to address this to fix this.

(02:18:33)
Because this is, as I said in my opening statement, this is just unacceptable and we have a responsibility. Forget the tribal or the treaty responsibility, we have a moral responsibility as human beings. So we're going to keep working on this, but I sincerely want to thank all of you for coming and sharing your stories with us today. As Tom said there, personal stories make things real. But I want to get to the agency people and talk to them about what's going on and what thoughts they might have and how we might improve this system. But thank you all.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (02:19:11):

Can I just say one thing? I just want to clarify. When it comes to serving the urban population, we want to ensure that we never touch any tribal carve out dollars that have been put aside to ensure the public health and safety of our communities. It needs to be more, but we can't forget those of us who live in the urban areas and that we are tribal people regardless of where we live. So increase those tribal dollars and also be sure that you're considering the urban populations. Thank you.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (02:19:36):

Chairman Simpson, can I also say that crime and the failure to prosecute cases does not stop during lame duck, so the work should not stop just because we are in lame duck.

Chairman Simpson (02:19:49):

Absolutely.

Eugenia Charles-Newton (02:19:50):

Thank you.

Chairman Simpson (02:19:50):

You bet.

Mary Jane Miles (02:19:51):

I just want to say, usually the urban Indians were relocated through the Government Relocation Program. That's how my family got to Los Angeles. So it was the government that sent us there.

Chairman Simpson (02:20:08):

Yeah. Okay. Thank you all.

Abigail Echo-Hawk (02:20:11):

Thank you.