Efforts to investigate the fates of missing and murdered Indigenous people are getting a $16 million boost.
California will be providing grants to federally recognized Indian tribes in the state to identify, investigate and publicize cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats struck a deal on the 2023-24 budget June 26.
“I am glad that these items that will benefit our community and others around the state have been funded,” Assemblyman James Ramos, D-San Bernardino, the first and only California Native American to serve in the state legislature, said in a news release. “They will make a difference.”
According a study funded by the National Institute of Justice, 84.3% of Indigenous women will experience violence in their lifetime, compared to 71% of White women, including higher rates of sexual violence, physical violence by their intimate partner, stalking or psychological aggression by their intimate partner. Indigenous men are also more likely to have been the victims of violence, with 81.6% of them being victims of violence some time in their lives, compared to 64% of White men.
But investigating violent crimes against Indigenous people is lacking. As of 2016, the National Crime Information Center reported 5,712 missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls in the U.S. But only 116 of those cases had been logged into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has said solutions are “desperately needed.”
“Native peoples have called this land home since time immemorial. Yet today, the unfortunate reality is that many of our tribal communities feel and are under threat, worried that their loved ones, their mothers, their daughters, their sisters will go missing, will lost to violence and to murder,” Bonta said at a May 3 news conference in Sacramento, marking the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.
California’s 2022 budget already provided $4 million in one-time money for the grants, as part of a $12 million package to address public safety on tribal lands. The new budget adds an additional $12 million to the grant funding.
Specifically, the grant money is intended to “help California tribes identify, collect case-level data, publicize, investigate, and solve cases involving missing Indigenous persons. These funds are available to provide resources for tribal police and prosecutors, counseling services, education, and other activities,” according to the state’s budget summary.