Newsy: Native Americans React To Plan To Help Solve Crimes Against Indigenous People

By Native News Online Staff - December 22, 2019 at 10:53PM

Published December 23, 2019

Reports show thousands of Native American women have gone missing in recent years. 

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Andrea Lynn Roque of Michigan’s Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians says she could have been one of them, according to this report by Newsy. The video news network tells the story of Roque’s near abduction when she was a teenager as an example of the violence against Native women.   

Statistics show four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than half have lived through sexual violence, according to the Newsy report.   

Reporter Terace Garnier, a Washington D.C.-based reporter for the video news network also interviewed Rep. Debra Haaland (D-New Mexico) and Native News Online Publisher Levi Rickert for the story.   

The report also highlights reaction to a new White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives. 

The task force, which is overseen by Attorney General William Barr, was created by an Executive Order by President Trump in November. The $1.5 million initiative places coordinators in attorneys general offices in 11 states, including Michigan, to develop protocols and law enforcement response to missing cases, according to the Newsy report. The initiative also provides and coordinates FBI assistance with tribal leaders and improves data analysis.  

“I think it’s very necessary that there’s a focus on it at the federal level,” Rickert told Newsy.  He applauds the effort, but told Newsy’s Garnier that it’s not enough.  

“I think one of the problems is as Native Americans, we aren’t taken seriously in terms of who we are as people,” he told Newsy.  “And a lot of times, the women are accused of being runaways or becoming prostitutes — and so there has been a real de-emphasis of who we are as native people.” 

To watch the report, visit the Newsy site. 

 

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