INDIANS DISAPPEARING FROM INDIAN COUNTRY: WHY?
Mystery or Design? On the one hand, it’s inscrutable. On the other, it’s not. Bits and pieces of the situation pop up from time to time. Hollywood has turned out films such as Wind River, the story of a murdered girl on a “reservation” in the State of Wyoming. The mainstream media occasionally writes about Indians going missing. Articles pop up in the New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, or Indian Country Today.
A major aspect appears to be that women and girls form the largest category of disappearances. They are, in fact, murdered at a rate of 10 times more than women of any other ethnic group. Additionally, the rates of rape and violent crime among Indians are all higher than the national average. But, given the often-obscure situation, there seems to be a dearth of hard numbers about the vanishings.
Sure, people run away, for their own reasons, all the time. Some seek to leave intolerable situations at home. Some disappear in search of a better life. Some simply don’t want to be found. One knowledgeable anthropologist noted that the disappearances follow the Old Western Frontier, where white settlers often clashed with various Indian tribes. Additionally, he commented that a lot of the violence often occurs as the result of “reservation” life—poverty, substance abuse, unemployment, alcohol, few social services, questionable police protection.
Law & Indians. Many disappeared are victims of foul play--by design, by drugs, by fits of rage. But, being Indian, they are dealt with casually in the federal Constitution:
· Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 3: [Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce…with the Indian Tribes
· Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 18: [Congress shall have Power] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
· Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2: [the President] …shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties…
Subsequent federal laws dealing with the various Indian Nations are based on those three foregoing points. Over time, the Indians have been seen as sovereign entities with whom only the national government might deal. This, perhaps, has contributed to the problem. Who tracks the vanishings? The Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Interior Department (not a domestic intelligence service)? The tribal police on each “reservation”? State governments (which may not deal with the Indian Nations)?
To be sure, Congress has enacted serval laws dealing with the problem. According to Kolby Kicking Woman, writing in Indian Country Today (September 22, 2020), two laws aimed at increasing collaboration among tribes, law enforcement, and the federal government were proposed [and later passed]. Their goal was to improve “information and data sharing to enhance crime prevention efforts in Indian Country”.
As stated in an Ojibwa Nation website, there are increased efforts to collect information for databases “to track and resolve cases of missing and murdered…members among the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of the Chippewa Nation.” The undated article (from the Detroit Free Press) noted that there are tribes in six States participating in a national pilot project to address missing and murdered Indians.
And Yet…This article was inspired by the clash between wishful thinking and reality. In a chance conversation with a criminal investigator in a Western State with a number of once powerful Indian Nations, the agent commented that the only real way to learn about the disappearances is to establish close contacts with powerful and connected Native leaders. These are the people who know what is happening. Many of the Disappeared’s friends and relatives are reluctant to discuss the issue with outsiders. In fact, according to an undated Great Falls (Montana) Tribune piece, “…few of the local Native American families filed missing persons reports.” The article added that “In Montana, 26 percent of the people identified as missing are Native Americans, who make up less than 7 percent of the population…” Another hindrance is Indian culture. For example, an article in AgWeek (June 9, 2016) commented “Crows [an Indian Nation] are raised not to talk about death or even wear the color black…”
Making matters worse, our interlocutor said, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. agency charged with investigating crimes against Indians, could care less about examining disappearances. [Perhaps they are more concerned with fighting “terrorism”.] He urged a widespread, rather than local, construction of databases tabulating these disappearances.
His view is borne out by an AP article of September 9, 2018. In it, Ivan MacDonald, a member of the Blackfoot Nation, said “…the federal government doesn’t really give a crap at the end of the day…” More broadly, he also remarked: “But often, there’s frustration with tribal police and federal authorities, and a feeling many cases aren’t handled urgently or thoroughly.”
In the same article, former North Dakota [a U.S. State] federal prosecutor Tim Purdon described the situation as “a jurisdictional thicket”, adding “of overlapping authority and different laws depending on the crime, where it occurred (on a reservation or not) and whether a tribal member is the victim or perpetrator…if a crime is suspected, it’s difficult to know how to get help.”
Continuing, Purdon rhetorically asked “Where do I go to file a missing persons report? Do I go to the tribal police?...In some places they’re underfunded and undertrained. The Bureau of Indian Affairs? The FBI?...Do I go to one of the county sheriffs?...”
Sarah Deer, university professor, author, and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation explains the reasons for the missing and/or murdered: “Native women have long been considered invisible and disposable in society and those vulnerabilities attract predators…It’s made us more of a target, particularly for the women who have addiction issues, PTSD and other kinds of maladies. You have a very marginalized group, and the legal system doesn’t seem to take proactive attempts to protect Native women in some cases.”
Carmen O’Leary, director of the Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, has a similar take on the matter. “They almost shame the people that are reporting (and say), ‘Well, she’s out drinking. Well, she probably took up with some man.’ A lot of times families internalize that kind of shame, (thinking) that it’s her fault somehow.”
Shame on America. With the growing U.S. obsession with minorities, with the growing U.S. concentration on civil rights for some ethnicities, it’s outrageous that the original ethnicity that was officially and unofficially murdered, deprived of their culture and language, stripped of their land, sent to concentration camps, now is disappearing and few keep track of the disappearances.
If we can operate the Internet, if we can send a man to the Moon, why can’t we tabulate evaporating Indians? Sarah Deer said they are invisible and disposable. Yes, and have been that way since the first settlers landed in the New World in the 17th Century.
J. Michael Springmann is an attorney, author, political commentator and former diplomat. He wrote, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider’s View, recounting the U.S. creation of Islamic terrorism.. Additionally, he penned Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, an analysis of the alien wave sweeping the Continent.