The Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis is an ongoing issue of national concern. Now, tribes are hoping new measures will get bipartisan support in Congress to help tribal law enforcement solve these cases.
One bill is called BADGES — Bridging Agency Data Gaps & Ensuring Safety. The other is called Invest to Protect. Both would fund tribal law enforcement to combat violence and in particular address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis. Both bills have been introduced by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) and Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota).
Both measures passed the U.S. Senate last year but will have to be reintroduced in the current Congress.
Other related bills Sen. Cortez-Masto have sponsored and passed are the Not Invisible Act and Savanna’s Act. The commission created by the Not Invisible Act specifically called for the passage of Cortez Masto’s BADGES bill to help law enforcement better serve Native communities.
Benny Tso, the Tribal Chairman of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, said these funds would give them access to forensic resources and enhance data sharing among tribal and non-tribal law enforcement. He hopes this will impact their ability to solve these crimes.
“A lot of our brothers and sisters go missing to no avail, with no help and no resources,” Tso said. “It seems like a lot of those cases get swept under the rug And, it’s troubling to hear all these cases that go unheard or unanswered.”
Tso said he would also like to improve the collaborative effort between tribal and non-tribal law enforcement with cultural sensitivity training.
“Not everybody’s ‘cookie-cutter,’ there’s not just Western thought,” he said. “Different ethnicities, I think, need to be taken into consideration.”
According to the National Crime Information Center, murder is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women, and that rate is 10 times higher than it is for all other ethnicities.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.