AMBER Alert in Indian Country: Issue 4 2021 (amberadvocate.org)

Nearly 10,000 Native Americans—more than 7,000 under the age of 18--went missing in 2020. Those statistics from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) were shared at the first virtual AMBER Alert Indian Country Symposium—which was held in conjunction with the National AMBER Alert Symposium on August 17-19, 2021.

Tribal AMBER Alert partners in attendance at this year’s event learned powerful lessons on the accelerated efforts to find missing and abducted children from American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Beyond the startling statistics, these cases represent real people and show that in 2020, homicide ranked as the #3 cause of death for Native American males, and #6 for Native American females. In that same year, 46% of homicides were preceded by an argument, 18% after a physical fight, and 18% involved an intimate partner.

The U.S. has 574 federally recognized tribes—including 229 Alaska Native villages. California has 108 tribes; the remaining 237 are located throughout 34 states. Only 14 states have no tribes, yet all have Native American residents. The Navajo Nation has more than 300,000 members while the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians has 8 members.

Chaney shared recent efforts to protect Indigenous communities, including:

• The Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships, issued in January 2021, directs “all Executive departments and agencies consult with Indian Tribes and respect Tribal sovereignty as they develop policy on issues that impact Indian communities.”
• DOJ invested $1.5 million to hire Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIP) Coordinators in 11 states to provide training and support local response efforts.
• The MMIP coordinators created a Tribal Community Response Plan to implement culturally appropriate guidelines when investigating cases of missing and murdered American Indians.
• Operation Lady Justice began in 2019 to improve the response to murdered Native Americans, particular missing and murdered women and girls.
• Savanna’s Act clarifies federal, state, Tribal and local law enforcement responses to murdered Indian people.
• The Not Invisible Act increases intergovernmental coordination in identifying and combatting violent crime within tribal lands.

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