‘She was decapitated a block from a police station’: Indigenous women are going missing and no one listens

It doesn’t matter if people know this is happening, they kill us anyway,” Audrey Huntley says. “We thought if we broke the silence something would change but unfortunately nothing has.” The issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women may have once been an unspoken secret – but people now know about it. Marches, attention from politicians, international media focus, awareness of this North American crisis has hugely increased over the past two decades. But, as documentary-maker and victims' rights paralegal Huntley says, “they kill us anyway”.

Sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, friends – Indigenous women and girls in the US and Canada continue to go missing at a disproportionate rate. Murder is the third leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaskan Native women. In Canada, a quarter of all women murdered in 2015 were Indigenous. In 1980 it was 9 per cent.

Justin Trudeau spearheaded a national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women (MMIW). The Savanna’s Act, aimed to curb the epidemic of violence against native women, passed unanimously in the US Senate during the last Congress. Yet Facebook is still full of heartbreaking missing posts of young native women, and Indigenous women continue to be raped, attacked, killed, at truly alarming rates.

Contacting victims and their families in Canada had a distressing domino effect. Everyone who had been touched by violence knew another native family who had lost someone – often multiple women. Alaya McIvor, a survivor of sexual exploitation and human trafficking in Canada, lost two women close to her. “In 2004 my friend, a trans woman, was murdered and I felt so lost because she was like my sister,” she tells The Independent. “She went missing and was found 30 days later at a rest stop 8km outside of a little town called Portage La Prairie Manitoba.”

Seven years later, her cousin, Roberta McIvor, was killed in Manitoba. The then 32-year-old was attacked by two teenagers during an attempted car-jacking. They pulled Ms McIvor out of the vehicle but she was still tangled in the seatbelt and they drove away, dragging her for a kilometre. “She was decapitated in Sandy Bay Ojibway, just one one block from a police station, right on a main road. It took about a month for her murderers to be caught.”

Many cases of MMIW go unsolved, with family members longing for answers. Maggie Cywink has been searching for her sister’s killer for 25 years. Sonya Nadine Mae Cywink, originally from Whitefish River First Nation on Manitoulin Island, was living in Ontario and struggling with drug addiction when she disappeared on 26 August 1994. Four days later, the 31-year-old’s body was found “with signs of trauma”. “She was pregnant at the time of her murder,” Maggie says.

Sonya’s case remains an active, open investigation, with the Ontario Provincial Police continuing to work with the family to find out what really happened all those years ago.

The national inquiry into missing and murdered women was launched in Canada in 2015. The testimonies of 1,484 family members and survivors have been heard so far, with the ultimate goal of “looking into and reporting on the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women and girls”.

The inquiry was initially heralded as a victory for Justin Trudeau, and may be presented that way again this year as Canada barrels towards a general election. But what appeared to be a huge step forward, a long-awaited acknowledgement of this deep-seated issue, has in fact been branded a “sham” by many of those it was intended to help.

“I think the inquiry is a joke. It’s a slap in the face,” McIvor says, after speaking to the inquiry about her own experiences of trafficking, and the death of her cousin Roberta. “They kept calling it a ‘trauma informed process’ – it was never trauma informed. If anything they were unapproachable to families.” Nearly six months after testifying at the inquiry, McIvor is still waiting for her after care.

Danielle Ewnin, whose sister Eleanor was found dead in 1982, was one of many relatives who spoke at the inquiry. “Our family testified in November 2017 in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. The inquiry was to get the police and coroner report. They did not. We have recently found out that my sister’s police and coroner report was filed under a different name. Their mandate of ‘finding the truth, honouring the truth’ failed our family and my sister miserably.”

The inquiry has been blighted by a string of resignations, and repeatedly attacked over its lack of sensitivity, and lack of results. Huntley, a co-founder of No More Silence, a network that supports MMIW activism, said: “I think the inquiry was a waste of money because we’ve had so many reports and studies ... but very few recommendations have been implemented.

“Some family members have had a good experience, but I would’ve liked to see that money being spent on things that would keep women safe – like shelters on reserves, housing.”

More than 140 family members signed an open-letter to Trudeau, demanding a reset on the inquiry to encompass some of these concerns. The letter reads: “We have continually asked the commissioners of this inquiry to include our voices and have worked tirelessly to guide them in how they can honour the spirits of our relations. They have continually dismissed our concerns, refused to take steps to rebuild trust, and have maintained a deeply misguided approach that imposes a harmful, colonial process on us.”

The letter, which echoes the sentiments of many family members we spoke to, calls for an “Indigenous-led, community-driven inquiry”, and for increased clarity and support around hearings. The Independent contacted the commissioners of the inquiry for a response, but they did not reply in time for publication.

The United States has had no such inquiry, yet 5,277 Native American females were entered as missing at the US national crime information centre in 2018. These new entries are on top of 5,646 in 2017, and 5,711 in 2016.

As Jacqueline Agtuca of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Centre says, “If these crimes were committed against non-Indians there would be a national outcry calling for justice.”

A tangled web of tribal vs state vs federal responsibility makes tracking MMIW close to impossible. Finding reliable data proves a constant battle for those addressing the issue, allowing women to continually fall through the cracks.

“Criminal jurisdiction in Indian country is regularly described as a ‘maze’,” Christopher Foley, from Indian law resource centre, says. “Whether a crime can be prosecuted by state, tribal, or federal government depends on a complex analysis of how the federal government classifies the land where the crime took place, the Indian or non-Indian status of victim and perpetrator, and the nature of the crime.”

A new report, however, does shine some light on trends in the US, specifically in urban areas, where 71 per cent of American Indian and Alaskan Natives live.

After examining 71 cities across 29 states, the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) found that the state with the highest number of MMIW cases is New Mexico, closely followed by Washington state. In the database, the youngest victim was a baby less than one year old. The oldest victim was an 83-year-old.

Alarmingly the report found not only are some women being classified with the wrong race, but that there could be concerns in how deaths are being recorded in America. One death investigated was classified as a suicide, despite the case having been reopened as a homicide. Another was listed as an overdose, when the woman’s body had been moved and disposed of “suspiciously”.

Much of the more reliable data rests on historic cases, but searches for missing women are not relegated to the past. They are a very real and constant presence among American Indigenous communities. Tamera Bear Comes Out is searching for her 20-year-old daughter, Shacaiah ‘Blue’ Harding, who went missing in Montana in July last year.

“She loves to sing and dance, you could always find her dancing wherever she was,” Tamera says of her daughter. Both Shacaiah and her mother have struggled with addiction, with arguments common in their relationship, but they’ve never gone longer than two weeks without speaking.

“It has been the longest eight months of my life,” Tamera says. She has no idea where Shacaiah is but continues to search. “I would give anything to hold my daughter right now. At times it feels so unreal and like I am going to wake up from a nightmare.”

Despite no nationwide inquiry as Canada has experienced, the US government is waking up to the crisis.

One of the most recent legislative developments has been the Savanna’s Act, named after pregnant 22-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, who went missing in Fargo, North Dakota, in 2017. Eight days after her family reported her disappearance, the young woman’s body was found in a river a few miles from the Minnesota border by kayakers. Reports say her baby was cut from her body before she was killed.

Following this case the state senator at the time – Heidi Heitkamp – sponsored the Savanna’s Act bill, which aims to create a protocol for responding to cases of MMIW, improving communication and coordination across different levels of government, as well as aiding tribal authorities.

Although Senator Heitkamp is no longer in office, the bill has not died. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Senator Cortez Masto of Nevada reintroduced the Act in January. “Savanna’s Act passed unanimously in the Senate during the last Congress,” Senator Cortez Masto says. “Our work now is to ensure that the bill is as effective as possible, and we are working in a bipartisan way to make that happen.

“The US government is not fulfilling its sacred trust responsibility to protect the well-being of our native peoples,” she adds. “We must do more to address the epidemic of missing and murdered Native women, and Savanna’s Act is a first step in that effort.”

Despite being reintroduced in January, the Savanna’s Act is yet to be considered by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Trump’s government shutdown delayed the entire legislative calendar, putting a pin in bills such as this, and creating an inevitable backlog. It is likely that the Act will pass either as a stand-alone law, or elements of the bill may be incorporated into the reauthorisation of the Violence Against Women Act.

Although the implementation of this Act is being welcomed by Republicans, Democrats and activists alike, many reckon there is much more to be done. “The Savanna’s Act is one example of a positive effort to improve the reporting of cases of missing and murdered Native women,” Jacqueline Agtuca says, “but there is an urgent need to strengthen the local tribal response for women who are in immediate danger and who need help. These women cannot wait for the federal system to be reformed.”

Echoing the calls of many victims’ families, Ms Agtuca highlights that urgent action on the ground is needed as much as bills like this. “The Savanna’s Act could provide such immediate assistance by including a provision for resources for tribes and programmes such as tribal shelters to develop local community protocols for cases of missing and murdered women. The cases of the disappeared do not have to become murder cases.”

It is not an easy pill for North America to swallow that thousands of women of the same race are going missing and being murdered every year, and becomes even harder to take when confronted with the reasons behind it.

“America is generally reluctant to acknowledge systemic discrimination, and structural racism and violence,” Christopher Foley of Indian Law says. Although he acknowledges “outstanding” work done by native activists, particularly in their mobilisation of US Senators, Mr Foley makes it clear that “this is a long-standing problem”.

“It is rooted in the long history of American colonialism, in institutional patriarchy, and in our country’s cultures of rape and misogyny. It is the result of the loss of Indigenous lands and the suppression of Indigenous governing authority. Violence against Indigenous women is not new and it will take a long time to fix.”

His words are echoed by people who have lost loved ones to violence. Maggie Cywink, who has been searching for answers about her sister’s death for 25 years, says colonialism is at the heart of today’s issues: “All Indigenous women face systemic violence; the stealing of land and the denial of land, the Indian Act, loss of status, the splitting up of families. Because of these systemic violences and the constant, ongoing structure of settler colonialism, Indigenous women and girls are over represented as survivors and victims of violence, sexual abuse and are vastly over represented in murder cases.”

Such engrained, systemic problems are deeply complex, so require equally complex solutions. “The only way to effect lasting change is when Indigenous women, grassroots, advocates and activists and their allies have an autonomous voice and the resources to make the necessary changes from the bottom up,” Cywick says.

There is also a clear need for resources. Housing, education, policing, healthcare; direct ways to help women out of situations that breed violence are being called for by activists. The dearth of reliable data shows the issue for what it is. A lack of communication, responsibility and awareness, all rolled into one. Without clear records, accountability of perpetrators is near impossible, and allows countries to gloss over this international crisis.

As Foley says: “Data, on a national and tribal basis, is critical to addressing missing and murdered Indigenous women and to restoring safety to Native women.”