Colorado missing and murdered indigenous office to address MMIR crisis

A battle of wills over how to investigate missing and murdered indigenous people ended Tuesday with advocates and the governor agreeing on an office dedicated to the crisis.

Standing in the Capitol lobby, with blood-red handprints covering their mouths — a symbol in support of the thousands of the missing and murdered indigenous people — advocates Donna Chrisjohn and Raven Payment declared a win while acknowledging the work left to do.

“This a huge win for our community and doing what’s right,” Payment, who is Ojibwe and Mohawk, said. “At the end of the day, this isn’t about myself, this isn’t about Donna, this isn’t about our sponsors. This is about our communities and our relatives that have been enduring this violence that frankly, no one asked for. So to have this big starting place, to have an office in our government to start doing this work in a good way, is a victory.”

SB22-150, sponsored by Reps. Leslie Herod and Monica Duran and Sen. Jessie Danielson, all Democrats, aims to specifically address the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people in Colorado. Indigenous women in particular face heightened rates of violence, advocates and researchers say. And those crimes are too often not properly tracked or understood.

The murder rate of indigenous women is three times that of white women; more than half of indigenous women experience sexual violence in their lifetime, and 96% of victims face it from non-indigenous people, according to the National Congress of American Indians.

And when indigenous women go missing, it’s not always properly tracked or investigated, advocates say. In 2016, of more than 5,7000 missing indigenous women and girls identified by the National Crime Information Center, only 116 were reported in Department of Justice statistics, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.

The bill creates an office of liaison for missing and murdered indigenous relatives within the Colorado Department of Public Safety. It was initially opposed by Gov. Jared Polis’ office, at least as initially envisioned, over concerns it would create “a broad scope of work, with expectations that are beyond the current mission and skill set” of the Department of Public Safety.

The administration initially suggested assigning Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents to the cases and establishing a task force within the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs to report on best practices for the crisis — a proposal the advocates immediately found unacceptable and demeaning. It signaled that they weren’t being listened to and didn’t know what would be best for their own communities, Payment and Chrisjohn said.

The version that passed on a bipartisan vote of the House of Representatives Tuesday, and saw bipartisan approval by the Senate, hews closer to the original proposal from indigenous advocates. While speaking in support of the amended bill in the Senate, Danielson wore the red handprint over her mouth as a sign of solidarity.

Payment said she puts the bill at about 80% of what she and other advocates fought for, though some of that gap reflects a distrust built over generations and reinforced during negotiations over this bill.

The amendment offered by House sponsors blindsided advocates, Payment and Chrisjohn said — another example of feeling spoken for, instead of spoken to, on matters concerning their community, even if sponsors had good intentions. Duran said the waning hours of the legislative session forced them to offer it in the hopes it would be agreeable, and in the hopes some legislation would survive. At that point, the Senate still needed to concur, in effect serving as a check against legislation that didn’t meet the advocates’ goals.

Payment and Chrisjohn hope the office, in addition to bringing meaningful relief and closure to victims and their families, will help strengthen their voice as a community.

“The governor and his policy advisors still quite don’t understand or hear us,” Payment said. “So I think that establishing that office will give an avenue for us to have further conversations for them to really understand this issue and how our communities work and how to continue to center us and trust that we know what’s best to help heal our community.”

She said she’s ready for sleep — not rest, she was careful to say, since there is still work to do — after coming so far.

Herod said it was “the determination, tenacity and spirit of the folks who are fighting for this bill” that they were able to get to the agreement. She also thanked the governor’s staff for working with them to reach the agreement.

In a statement, Polis’ spokesperson Conor Cahill thanked the House members for “successfully addressing the technical challenges in the bill and amending it so that we can successfully implement the legislation.”

“The governor is aligned with the shared goals of the sponsors and the version that passed the House gets it to a place where we can help achieve those goals within the structure and organization of the executive branch,” he said.

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