Two Indigenous advocates are calling on President Donald Trump to reassemble a federal commission focused on a national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
The Not Invisible Act Commission traveled the country in 2023, listening to hundreds of Native survivors of violence and families who have lost loved ones, and, later that year, delivered dozens of recommendations to prevent these types of cases from happening and improve law enforcement responses when they do.
But in February, the Trump administration took offline the “Not One More” report, which contained those recommendations to the federal government. (The removal comes as federal agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or scrub from public documents, including “Native American” and “indigenous community,” according to the New York Times.)
That’s ironic, the advocates say, considering it was Trump who, in 2020, signed into law the act that created the commission. He also declared May 5 Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives Awareness Day. The U.S. Senate signed a resolution to the same effect in 2017, after Hanna Harris, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, was murdered in 2013. Her birthday was May 5.
With that day approaching, Abigail Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), the director of the Urban Indian Health Institute, which issued a commonly-cited report on the crisis in 2018, has a message for the president.
“I would challenge him to do something meaningful in terms of investment around the Not Invisible Act Commission recommendations and to stand behind what he did in his last administration, and make our women, our girls, our people who go missing a priority, because otherwise we’ve just got a token day that people vaguely remember that Native people are missing and being murdered at such high rates,” Echo-Hawk said. “We want more than a day.”
The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump will reconvene the commission, and the Justice Department did not respond to a question about why the commission’s report was taken down.
Crisis continues, scope remains unknown
Tribal communities as well as federal and state authorities widely acknowledge American Indian and Alaska Native people experience higher rates of violence — from 2013 to 2014, the homicide rate for Native women was more than double the national average, second only to non-Hispanic Black women — and that they go missing at higher rates than non-Native people. But a patchwork of federal, state and tribal jurisdictions have made it difficult to quantify the true scope of what many refer to as a generations-old crisis.
A community-led movement to address the crisis resulted in the Not Invisible Act — the first bill in U.S. history to be introduced by four congressional members enrolled in federally recognized tribes, which Trump signed in October 2020.
The commission’s mandate was to submit recommendations for combating violent crime against Native people, which it did in November 2023 with a 210-page report.
The U.S. government’s “failure to fulfill its trust responsibilities” to tribal nations, “coupled with historic policies that sought to disconnect [American Indian and Alaska Native] people from their land, language and culture, have given rise to a public health, public safety, and justice crisis in tribal communities,” the report reads. The crisis “is most notably reflected in the federal government’s failure to effectively prevent and respond to the violence against” Native people.
One of the commission’s recommendations to the federal government is to declare a Decade of Action and Healing, which should, according to the report, include partnerships with tribal communities and governments and focus on improving safety, prevention, support services and healing for Native communities through “increased funding, policy reform, action-oriented programs, and training and technical assistance.”
The Interior and Justice departments issued a response to the commission’s recommendations in March 2024.
Missed deadlines
The commission got a late start under the incoming Biden administration in 2021. The act required the Interior secretary and the U.S. attorney general to appoint members to a joint commission by February 2021. But in October 2021, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported no members had been appointed. Justice Department officials told the office that the change in presidential administration had slowed the appointments.
Then Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) and Attorney General Merrick Garland eventually appointed a few dozen commission members, including tribal leaders, service providers, affected families and law enforcement.
“Some of the best people I know were appointed to this commission, and they fought hard to do what they could with the limited time because of the federal government’s failure to implement in the first two years,” Echo-Hawk said. “While they did an incredible job with the time that they had, it still lacked the amount of family and community engagement that it should have had.”
The act required the commission to make recommendations to the federal government by April 2022. Fast forward a year later to April 2023, though, and the commission was just beginning to host a series of hearings to gather testimony from affected families and survivors.
Members traveled to seven cities from April to July, including Albuquerque, and later held one virtual hearing.
“The families are tired,” said Amber Kanazbah Crotty (Diné), a commission member and Navajo Nation Council delegate, during the Albuquerque stop. “The families are tired of walking. They’re tired of protesting. They’re tired of everything. They just want justice.”
The statute called for the commission to disband two years after it was created, but due to the delays, it continued its work until releasing the November 2023 report.
Continuity in question
Now that the report has been delivered and a federal agency response issued, Echo-Hawk and Crotty say reconvening the commission would keep the momentum going.
Commission members should host another round of nationwide listening sessions to follow up on their first visits and hear from communities who were left out in 2023, Crotty said.
“We could not only hear cases, but we could actively monitor, is anything getting better? What are the best practices? What are things that we need to do to change the tide of this crisis?” she said. “And that’s how you deal with a crisis. You don’t just look at the issues once, write a report and things are done. You have to constantly go back and modify your approach, bring in different voices.”
With the change in presidential administration, it’s difficult to know which recommendations have been put into action, Echo-Hawk and Crotty said.
Echo-Hawk pointed to one initiative that is moving along: The Bureau of Indian Affairs in February launched Operation Spirit Return, which is meant to “identify unknown human remains located within or close to Indian Country and are believed to belong to either American Indian or Alaska Native persons,” according to an agency press release. (After New Mexico In Depth’s interview with Echo-Hawk, the FBI announced the third phase of Operation Not Forgotten, targeting violent crime on reservations.)
That initiative aligns with the commission’s recommendations, Echo-Hawk said, but the federal government also needs to dedicate funding to preventative efforts.
“I don’t want to find our people after they’re already dead and buried somewhere,” Echo-Hawk said. “I want to prevent that from happening. I want resources to wrap around our families and loved ones when they’re searching. I want resources for those who are recovered after going missing and being trafficked.”
Crotty said she and other advocates have no choice but to keep pushing the Trump administration and working locally to support their communities.
After the announcement about Operation Spirit Return, the Navajo Nation’s Missing and Murdered Diné Relatives Task Force, of which Crotty is a member, sent the administration a letter asking for details, like whether there would be any consultation with tribes. The task force has yet to receive a response, according to Crotty.
“I think I have to stay hopeful for the families and for community members and for our relatives, but we can’t be silent,” Crotty said. “We have to continue the awareness and continue to advocate for our needs, because we know there is funding out there to do it. They just have to value us to invest after so many years and generations of us being dehumanized.”