Washington OKs first statewide missing Indigenous people alert
>> Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday signed into law a bill that creates a first-in-thenation statewide alert system for missing Indigenous people to help address a silent crisis that has plagued Indian Country in this state and nationwide.
The law sets up a system similar to Amber Alerts and so-called silver alerts, which are used respectively for missing children and vulnerable adults in many states. It was spearheaded by Democratic Rep. Debra Lekanoff, the only Native American lawmaker currently serving in the Washington state Legislature, and championed by Indigenous leaders statewide.
“I am proud to say that the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's and People's Alert System came from the voices of our Native American leaders,” said Lekanoff, a member of the Tlingit tribe and the bill's chief sponsor. “It's not just an Indian issue, it's not just an Indian responsibility. Our sisters, our aunties, our grandmothers are going missing every day ... and it's been going on for far too long.”
Tribal leaders, many of them women, wore traditional hats woven from cedar as they gathered around Inslee for the signing on the Tulalip Reservation, north
of Seattle. Afterward they gifted him with a handmade traditional ribbon shirt and several multicolored woven blankets.
The law attempts to address a crisis of missing Indigenous people — particularly women — in Washington and across the United States. While it includes missing men, women and children, a summary of public testimony on the legislation notes that “the crisis began as a women's issue, and it remains primarily a women's issue.”
Besides notifying law enforcement when there's a report of a missing Indigenous person, the new alert system will place messages on highway
reader boards and on the radio and social media, and provide information to the news media.
The legislation was paired with another bill Inslee, a Democrat, signed Thursday that requires county coroners or medical examiners to take steps to identify and notify family members of murdered Indigenous people and return their remains. That new law also establishes two grant funds for Indigenous survivors of human trafficking.
This piece of the crisis is important because in many cases, murdered Indigenous women are mistakenly recorded as white or Hispanic by coroners' offices, they're
never identified, or their remains never repatriated.
A 2021 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found the true number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. is unknown due to reporting problems, distrust of law enforcement and jurisdictional conflicts. But Native American women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall — and up to 10 times the national average in certain locations, according to a 2021 summary of the existing research by the National Congress of American Indians. More than 80% have experienced violence.