Two bipartisan bills signed into law in October 2020 that address the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women must be implemented as soon as possible, according to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and her Democratic colleagues.
“We request an update on the implementation of the provisions outlined in the Not Invisible Act and Savanna’s Act,” wrote Sen. Murkowski and U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jon Tester (D-MT) in a May 2 letter sent to Biden administration officials. “While we appreciate the briefing that your departments recently provided to our staff, we remain concerned by the lack of progress shown and our constituents deserve to know the status of your work.”
The Not Invisible Act, introduced in April 2019 by Sens. Murkowski and Cortez Masto, creates a point person in the Bureau of Indian Affairs to improve coordination of violent crime prevention across federal agencies, and establishes a commission of law enforcement, tribal leaders, federal partners, service providers, and survivors to make recommendations to the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on combating the epidemic of missing persons, murder and trafficking of Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
The lawmakers in January 2019 also introduced Savanna’s Act, which requires law enforcement training on how to record the tribal enrollment information of victims in federal databases and mandates that the Attorney General consult with tribes on how to improve relevance and access to federal databases; requires the creation of standardized guidelines for responding to cases of missing or murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, in consultation with tribes; and requires data on missing or murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, and recommendations on how to improve data collection, to be included in an annual report to Congress.
“Both of these laws outlined specific timeframes and deadlines for implementation; however, it is unclear which provisions have been undertaken and it appears that almost every deadline has been missed,” the lawmakers wrote in their letters, which were sent to DOJ Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The Not Invisible commission, for example, should have begun its work more than a year ago, but members have not even been named, they wrote, noting that, similarly, under Savanna’s Act, the creation of regionally appropriate response guidelines to cases of missing or murdered Native people should have already been implemented by U.S. attorneys.
“Yet Tribes on the ground have not received progress updates with any concrete information,” wrote the lawmakers.
Sen. Murkowski and her colleagues requested that several questions be answered by May 16, including what steps are being taken by DOJ and Interior to ensure implementation of the Not Invisible Act and Savanna’s Act are completed in a timely manner.
“Following your answers to these questions, we respectfully request that both departments work together to provide Congress with weekly update calls with our staffs on the implementation of the acts,” they wrote. “We request these updates in order to ensure that progress continues being made, as well as to provide our constituents with the most up-to-date information.”