The Underrepresentation of Indigenous Women as Victims

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Dec 6, 2023

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In recent years within the criminal justice field, there has been debate on whether or not marginalized peoples, especially the Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities, are over- or underrepresented in the criminal justice system when it pertains to victimization and the presence of their stories in the media and in data. Given that recent research proves that minorities are overrepresented within the prison system, it is thought by many that rather than being the victims of crimes, people of marginalized communities have a tendency to be the perpetrators of these crimes. Though the debate lies on whether or not people from marginalized communities are overrepresented when it comes, data and research show that they are overrepresented as criminal and underrepresented as victims of violent crimes, such as rape, assault, and murder. The high number of cases of indigenous women who have gone missing or have been murdered presented by the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) serve as a case study of how and why the underrepresentation of a marginalized community can happen in the criminal justice system. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, the murder is the third-leading cause of death among Indigenous women in the United States. Data provided by the National Crime Information Center helps corroborate this statement and show that out of the 12,846 total active missing persons cases in 2018, 9,914, close to 1.7% of the total number of cases, were American Indian/Alaskan Native people and only 153 of these cases were women. Furthermore, out of those 9,914 cases, it is still unknown how many of those cases were closed out that year and exactly how many remain active today (Joseph, 2021). The data collected by the Urban Indian Health Institute included cases not reported to the authorities and cases that dated back to the year 2000. Their data shows that, since 2000, there has been 506 cases of murdered and missing indigenous women across 71 cities and 29 states (UIHI, 2019, p. 5). The data presented by both the Urban Indian Health Institute and National Crime Information Center show that there are

2 discrepancies in how the data pertaining to Indigenous peoples, particularly women, is recorded and the fact that there are holes in the data. The UIHI stated in their report that it was hard to track records across all 29 states given the loopholes that had to be overcome and how little recording of these types of crimes is actually happening. Furthermore, they stated that though their data included cases not necessarily reported to the authorities (whether the police or any other law enforcement agency), they have reason to believe that there are many cases that go unreported due to fear of retaliation from the police or lack of trust that the system will do anything to actually solve the case. The UIHI also stated that the lack of number of cases and files of crimes perpetrated against Indigenous Women may be linked to misclassification of racial background of victims inputted into databases. The “N” on paperwork, for example, could have stood for “Negro” in the past rather than “Native American”, but this was never explained to those who are filing paperwork on cases. Another factor that leads to misclassification is the lack of knowledge or recognition of tribal nations. Due to the intricacies of tribal nation recognition in the U.S., many women may have had cases in which they were classified as white due to their tribe not being recognized by the U.S. government for any given time period (UIHI, 2019, p. 16). These two factors may be to blame for many cases being misclassified and this leads to a victim’s racial background, making research on crime victims within the indigenous community harder to conduct. The first problem outside of classifications within data collection in the criminal justice system that is encountered when considering why the data from law enforcement agencies of missing indigenous women is so low compared to other women and why cases of BIPOC victimization in general seem so low compared to their white counterparts is due to the fact that

3 we have such a detailed and engraved image of what a typical victim looks like in America. In The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America , the authors outline how the typical victim in the United States is considered to be a white person or a white woman to be exact, (Walker, 47). When examining this and taking into account that the image of what a criminal in American society tends to be any combination of a person of color, it is easier to understand why the idea of victims being anything other than white people may seem mundane to many and data and the media may contribute to the narrative that the population of indigenous women do not experience assault, rape, and murder like their white counterparts do. Nick Petersen writes that “Black and Latino victims receive less media coverage than White victims because they do not conform to scripts about ‘ideal victims’” and although he does not explicitly mention Native American and Indigenous victims, the same can be inferred of the lack of media coverage of their cases, (Petersen, 2016). Media tends to be where we get an idea of what is going on in the world and if the media lacks representation of the crimes happening in the world or misrepresents the people suffering of victimization, society and the public may be ignorant to the issues at hand. In their investigation, the UIHI also conducted research on how the media portrayed the crimes against indigenous women. They found that 934 news articles cover only 129 of the 506 cases of missing and murdered indigenous women they found throughout their research and data collection. Furthermore, their research found that out of these articles, 46 of the media outlets that covered these cases utilized violent language when covering the story. The UIHI defined violent language as language that engaged “in racism or misogyny or racial stereotyping, including references to drugs, alcohol, sex work, gang violence, victim criminal history, victim- blaming, making excuses for the perpetrator, misgendering transgender victims, racial misclassification, false information on cases, not naming the victim, and publishing

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4 images/video of the victim’s death” (UIHI, 2019, p. 19). Not only is the media not covering the stories of these indigenous women, but they are contributing to the misrepresentation of the community and number of cases of victims. When the outlets use violent language, they many times create a narrative that puts the history of the victim and their whereabouts into perspective, leading to victim blaming. Additionally, while they may be giving the cases coverage through one story, the UIHI found that there were no outlets that gave a sustained coverage on the cases that happen within the geographic areas they cover (UIHI, 2019, p. 19). Given that there are very little instance of cases getting coverage nationwide, this lack of representation can create a sense of helplessness and invisibility among indigenous women in their communities and contributes to the idea that, if they were to be attacked, there is no reason to report their assaults because they will not be helped by law enforcement or be represented properly in the media. In conclusion, the lack and misclassification of data and poor and inaccurate media coverage of crimes against indigenous women show that they are underrepresented as victims in the country. The lack of data and the fact that institutions such as the UIHI have to explain holes within the criminal justice system shows that the Native American and Indigenous community are not being served properly or protected in the same manner that their white counterparts are. To solve this issue, we must have law enforcement agencies invest in research efforts geared towards not only finding discrepancies in the system that create complications for these communities, but also find ways to solve them and ways to create relationships that foster a sense of accountability and trust so that indigenous women can feel safe to report crimes they suffer.

5 References Joseph, A. S. (2021). A Modern Trail of Tears: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Crisis in the US. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 79, 102136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jflm.2021.102136 Petersen, N. (2016). Neighborhood Context and Media Constructions of Murder: A Multilevel Analysis of Homicide Newspaper Coverage in Los Angeles County. Homicide Studies, 20(1), 25–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767914554616 Urban Indian Health Institute. (2019, November 27). Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls –. https://www.uihi.org/resources/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women- girls/la Walker, S., Spohn, C., & DeLone, M. (2017). The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.

The Underrepresentation of Indigenous Women as Victims

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