Montana Senators Fight For Indigenous Women

Montana senators Steve Daines (R) and Jon Tester (D) have not given up Savanna’s Act, with both senators vowing to move forward with the legislation. The bill failed to pass last session when retiring Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) refused to bring the bill up for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Savanna’s Act was introduced by former Democratic Senator from North Dakota Heidi Heitkamp. The bill seeks to address the continuing epidemic of missing and murdered Native American women and children by boosting Justice Department data collection efforts, expanding tribal access to federal crime information databases, and establishing law enforcement guidelines for responding to these cases. Goodlatte objected to a provision in the law that gave preference to agencies with direct need for the services as opposed to agencies with no links to native communities.

The bill has been taken up again this session by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who sits on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs alongside Daines and Tester. On Jan 22, Daines sent a letter to the committee Chairman John Hoeven and Vice Chairman Tom Udall, calling for a field visit to Montana so that members of the committee could hear from tribal members and families.

Tester recently cited the case of Henny Scott as an example of how tribal families and communities suffer when failures in the system happen. He has promised to continue fighting for missing and murdered indigenous women and their families. In addition to his work on Savanna’s Act, he has reintroduced his Securing Urgent Resources Vital to Indian Victim Empowerment (SURVIVE) Act, to give tribes access to funding to help survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Funding would be available for shelter, medical care, counseling and legal assistance.

The Urban Indian Health Institute, a division of the Seattle Indian Health Board, recently released a study entitled “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls” in which Montana ranked fifth in cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, of the 29 states included in the research. Billings ranked fifth out of 71 cities with the highest number of cases.