Understanding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis: An Analysis of the NamUs Database

• Author: Morgan B. Hawes,Danielle C. Slakoff,Nikolay Anguelov
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/08874034221098909
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034221098909

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2023, Vol. 34(2) 184 –207

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/08874034221098909

journals.sagepub.com/home/cjp

Article

Understanding the Missing

and Murdered Indigenous

Women Crisis: An Analysis

of the NamUs Database

Morgan B. Hawes1, Danielle C. Slakoff2,

and Nikolay Anguelov3

Abstract

Within the United States, there is an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous

women. Using data from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

(NamUs) repositories on missing and unidentified women, we examined how

demographic and regional differences affected case status. Within the NamUs

database, we found that American Indian/Alaska Native women are 135% more likely

to be listed within the “unidentified remains” cases than women of other races. The

results also showed that in states with relatively high urban population densities,

women of all races were 250% more likely to be found dead and remain unidentified

than women in places with a low urban population. We conclude by discussing three

areas in which policy can help bring Indigenous women’s plight back to the fore: (a)

in data collection efforts, (b) in increased support for Tribal police, and (c) via the

media’s purposeful focus on Indigenous issues.

Keywords

missing and murdered Indigenous women, American Indian/Alaska Native, NamUs,

femicide, data collection

Introduction

In the United States, adults have the right to disappear, which makes collecting statistics

on missing people a complex task. Currently, there are only two federal repositories that

1University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

2California State University, Sacramento, USA

3University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA

Corresponding Author:

Danielle C. Slakoff, Assistant Professor, Division of Criminal Justice, California State University,

Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA.

Email: Danielle.slakoff@csus.edu

1098909CJPXXX10.1177/08874034221098909Criminal Justice Policy ReviewHawes et al.

research-article2022

Hawes et al. 185

collect demographic data on missing and/or murdered individuals. According to data

from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC, 2014), which only provides sum-

mary statistics to the public, there were nearly 168,000 missing adult cases in 2014, of

which 70,000 were female. Of all cases housed within the NCIC database, 2,106 were

identified as an American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) person. The National Missing

and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs, 2018), the national centralized repository

for missing and unidentified persons, estimates that there are approximately 100,000

active missing persons cases on a given day in the United States.

In the United States, violence against women continues to be a widespread issue.

According to Smith (2018), in 2016, the rate of homicides perpetrated against women

increased from 10.2% to 12.2% from the previous year. That noted, compared with

other groups, AI/AN women are victimized at disproportionately high rates (Rosay,

2016; Williams, 2012). According to former Associate Attorney General Thomas

Perrelli, “Native women are murdered at rates more than 10 times the national aver-

age, yet Natives only represent 2% of the total population” (as cited in Pember, 2016,

para. 5). In addition, findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence

Survey (NISVS) indicate that an estimated four of five AI/AN women have experi-

enced violence during their lifetime (Rosay, 2016). Alarmingly, Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2017 report that homicide is the fourth lead-

ing cause of death for AI/AN women between the ages of 1 and 20, and the sixth lead-

ing cause for AI/AN women aged 20 to 44 years (Kochanek et al., 2019). Yet, despite

the higher rate of violence AI/AN women and girls face compared with women and

girls of other races, we continue to see very little media attention given to missing

Indigenous women and girls (Slakoff, 2020). Instead, missing White women and girls

receive a disproportionate amount of attention (Slakoff & Fradella, 2019).

Given what past research says about the increased risk for AI/AN women going

missing and being murdered, this study used NamUs data to examine the differences

between still missing and unidentified remains of women by race (AI/AN vs. non-

Native). Specifically, we conducted logistic regressions to examine whether there

were demographic and/or regional differences between AI/AN women and women of

other races. These analyses allowed us to examine variations in vulnerability between

the two groups. Our research concludes with policy implications related to the media’s

erasure of Indigenous lives, issues with tracking missing persons, and interagency col-

laboration between Tribal and other law enforcement agencies.

Literature Review

The Current Epidemic: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

(MMIW)

Over the past decade, the MMIW issue has grown from a grassroots campaign to a

federal initiative in both Canada and the United States. Canada established the

National Coalition for our Stolen Sisters in 2002. Afterward, a number of agencies

such as Amnesty International, the Native Women’s Association, the United Nations,