User:Noahbei/Missing and murdered Indigenous women

United States
In the United States, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic.  One in three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67% of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Native perpetrators. '''According to research from the National Institute of Justice, it was found that American Indian women are 1.2 times as likely to experience lifetime violence, 1.8 times as likely to be a victim of stalking, and 1.7 times as likely to be victims of violence in the past year compared to the Non-Hispanic White population.  Lisa Brunner, executive director of Sacred Spirits First National Coalition states:"What's happened through US Federal law and policy is they created lands of impunity where this is like a playground for serial rapists, batterers, killers, whoever and our children aren't protected at all."There were two acts that meant to remedy this issue in 2010 and 2013, Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA) and Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) respectively. The Tribal Law and Order Act gave tribes the ability to increase jail sentences for criminal cases. The federal Violence Against Women Act''' was reauthorized in 2013, which for the first time gave tribes jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute felony domestic violence offenses involving both Native American offenders on reservations, as well as non-Native offenders. In 2019 the Democratic House passed H.R. 1585 (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) by a vote of 263–158, which aimed to increase tribes' prosecution rights much further. This act was stalled in the Republican Senate up until 2022, when President Biden signed it into law through the Omnibus appropriations package. Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities—in both the US and Canada—have fought to bring awareness to this connection between sex trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the women who go missing and are murdered.

In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the creation of the Missing and Murdered Unit within that department, following her appointment and confirmation, to help for missing and murdered Indigenous women.