Michigan woman s slaying spurs focus on violence against indigenous women detroitnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from detroitnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Their work ranges from training tribal law enforcement on how to interact with victims to lobbying for laws to protect Indigenous people. Rachel Carr is the organization s Executive Director.
She believes tribal nations should have the power to try their own cases.
“If there s a problem in our tribal communities, they deserve tribal resolution. We have to rely on the federal government to come in and provide safety and justice for members in our community, she said.
Up until 2013, tribes had no ability to prosecute non-natives for domestic and dating violence. That year, they received limited power to do so through a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). But, that measure did not allow tribes to prosecute crimes related to child abuse, sex trafficking, rape or murder.
Advocates say not enough is being done to track the issue and hold offenders responsible.
The murder rate of Indigenous women is more than 10 times beyond the national average on some reservations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Four out of five Indigenous women have reported experiencing violence, more than half of which have been sexual in nature, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
There were 565 actively missing Indigenous women across the country, KUTV reported on Feb. 4, citing information from the FBI.
Yet data from Indigenous organizations suggest that figure might actually be far greater. In 2016, the Urban Indian Health Institute found there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, of which only 116 had been in a federal missing persons database.