Oregon bill takes aim at ‘epidemic of violence' around missing and murdered Indigenous people

Yahoo

13-03-2025

This story was originally published by InvestigateWest.
Melanie HenshawInvestigateWest
A new bill progressing in the Oregon Legislature would allocate staff and resources within the Oregon Health Authority to address the state's ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, would provide victim outreach and prevention services related to missing and murdered Indigenous people. In addition, it would instruct the health authority to create and maintain datasets on missing and murdered Indigenous people and to create several partnerships with tribal governments, Native American-led organizations, community leaders, and local, state, tribal and federal law enforcement.
The legislation, House Bill 3198, comes six years after another law that produced a report on the issue yielded limited results.
An InvestigateWest investigation into the state's response to the 2019 bill found there was limited progress on the report's recommendations for improving relationships between Indigenous communities and law enforcement and for improving data collection — and that Gov. Tina Kotek then had no awareness of progress on the law. Sanchez told InvestigateWest last May that she was formulating new legislation to spur further action.
Advocates were unsatisfied with the results of the 2019 bill, saying it didn't improve conditions for Native American families searching for loved ones.
As originally written, the 2025 bill would've ordered another study in collaboration with the U.S Department of Justice — but amendments proposed by Sanchez, the Legislature's second Indigenous lawmaker, moved it toward an 'action plan' that would provide long-sought resources.
In addition to ordering the collection of data on cases, the bill would dedicate staff within the Oregon Health Authority to establish interagency agreements with tribal governments, Native American-led organizations, law enforcement, and community leaders. These staffers would focus on victim services, outreach, education, and violence prevention for Indigenous communities. The bill's estimated cost is $500,000.
'Community wanted something to happen,' Sanchez told the House Committee on Judiciary in a public hearing Feb. 3. 'And they wanted it to happen sooner than taking a lot of time to continue to do more studies.'
The Oregon Health Authority, the state's health agency, would be tasked with the response, with Sanchez saying that it already has an existing prevention-model system used in public health crises and a good working relationship with the nine tribes.
As it stands, practical support for families, such as legal advocacy, emergency financial assistance, emotional support and assistance navigating the criminal justice system, has primarily come from individuals' communities or Native American-led community organizations.
Many family members, including in written testimony on the bill, cite the confusing and overwhelming process of juggling the search for a loved one, the associated emotional trauma and financial concerns. Jurisdictional complexities complicate which law enforcement agencies are responsible for managing a case involving a Native person, and families often find themselves without support.
'No family should be searching in the dark, without hope and without the help that they need,' testified Amanda Freeman, citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, on Feb. 3. 'This bill is a step toward making sure our people are seen, heard and protected.'
Multiple tribal organizations, as well as Multnomah County and Portland's Office of Government Relations, support the bill, which advanced from the House Committee on Judiciary and is now before the House Ways and Means Committee.
One component of the bill addresses a priority for advocates across Indian Country — improved data collection on missing and murdered Native Americans.
Improved data collection was one of the major recommendations from the 2019 law that made little progress. Advocates for Indigenous people say that poor data collection due in part to racial misclassification has made it impossible to determine the true number of missing and murdered Native American individuals. Although there have been stated efforts to improve data collection at the federal level, there's been little improvement on the ground, with many Native Americans turning to other community members for support and community-based data organizations left to try to keep track of the missing.
'Our state cannot wait for federal efforts to catch up,' testified Luhui Whitebear, an assistant professor at Oregon State University and member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation.
The bill would direct the health authority to work with tribal governments and Native American-led organizations to collect and maintain data on the missing and murdered, then use it to identify patterns and areas for targeted health interventions and violence prevention programs. It also calls on the health authority to work with representatives of the nine tribes within the geographic bounds of Oregon and representatives from Native American-led organizations to implement community education programs and support youth engagement initiatives to reduce vulnerabilities that disproportionately impact Indigenous people.
Supporters of the bill say it's an important step that moves beyond studying the problem and allocates staff from within the health authority to address the issue and begin to understand the root causes, though it doesn't touch on broader issues like criminal jurisdiction for tribes, which is limited.
'There have been task forces and studies and acknowledgments, but we still have a disproportionate impact to tribal people,' state Sen. Anthony Broadman, D-Bend, a former chief judge for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs tribal court, said in his testimony supporting the bill. Broadman is sponsoring the companion bill to HB 3192 in the state Senate.
Advocates and tribal officials say criminal jurisdictional complexities on tribal lands complicate investigations and leave Native Americans vulnerable to violence. Tribes do not have full authority to prosecute all crimes that occur on tribal lands. Instead, they are governed by a jurisdictional patchwork that can involve tribal, state or federal law enforcement, depending on a crime's location and whether or not the victim or offender is a citizen of a federally recognized tribe.
In Oregon, tribes are still recovering from the termination era of the 1950s, when almost all federally recognized tribes sharing geography with Oregon were 'terminated,' losing their federal recognition, land base, funding and services from the federal government. Tribes had their status restored in the 1970s and 1980s, but it caused lasting damage to tribal communities, which Broadman highlighted as contributing to the ongoing crisis.
'Consider the systems that have brought us here today in what we all acknowledge is an epidemic of violence in the missing (and) murdered and Indigenous persons epidemic,' Broadman said. 'As a state we are still in the phase of restoration — restoration of safe communities, restoration of systems that protect all Oregonians adequately.'
Reporter Melanie Henshaw covers Indigenous affairs and communities in the region. Reach her directly at [e-mail].