California has the fifth-highest Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons caseload; here’s how the state is working to mitigate the crisis
by Dorothy Korber
The crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is a national epidemic. Stemming from historic traumas suffered by tribal communities, Native Americans suffer violence and abductions at disproportionately high rates.
The California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls can be a force for change in this dire situation, says Catalina Chacon, the commission’s only Native American member.
California is home to 109 federally recognized tribes, the highest number of any state, and has the fifth-highest Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) caseload in America, according to Chacon.
“Nationally, indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than any other ethnicity,” Chacon says. “The MMIP crisis exists due to high rates of violence and sexual assault, racism, the objectification of native women and girls, and chronic neglect due to underfunding. For years, we have been kept silent.”
California is making some headway in reducing its MMIP caseload. Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom allocated $12.9 million to the effort. And, in 2023, the state launched its Feather Alert program, authorized in a bill by Assemblyman James Ramos, (D-45), a tribal member himself and Chair of the Native American Legislative Caucus. Feather Alerts, operated by the California Highway Patrol (CHP), provide immediate information to the public to help find missing indigenous persons.
But more needs to be done, as Chacon knows from her own family’s harrowing experience.
“I had a family member who went missing—she was 13,” she recalls. “When a loved one goes missing, your heart breaks. The more time goes on, the more you panic. There are so many stories where they never get found. The family was devastated.”
“Nationally, indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than any other ethnicity. The crisis exists due to high rates of violence and sexual assault, racism, the objectification of native women and girls, and chronic neglect due to underfunding.”
Catalina Chacon
Commissioner, the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls
Jurisdictional gaps are created by the overlapping legal boundaries between tribal, local, and federal law enforcement. These gaps can slow investigations when a few days can mean life or death for a missing woman or girl.
“I’m from the Pechanga Band of Indians,” Chacon says. “We don’t have tribal police, we have tribal rangers. They protect the reservation but they are not police officers.”
Coordination with local law enforcement is key but complicated, she adds.
The Feather Alert system wasn’t an option for Chacon’s family.
“We weren’t able to check all the boxes for the criteria needed for the CHP to post the alert. Instead, our family had to use social media to spread the word by individuals repeatedly reposting the information.”
The missing teen was found two days later—in Fresno, a 7-hour drive from her home in Temecula.
“For those two endless days, the whole family was in turmoil,” Chacon says. “Not being able to use the Feather Alert for my family member was especially devastating. I’d worked alongside Assemblymember Ramos to get the law passed, and I had such hopes for it.”
Since then, she says, Ramos has streamlined and strengthened the Feather Alert. The Commission also supports SB 891 (Cervantes), which establishes a MMIP Justice Program under the discretion of the Department of Justice and Ramos’ new bill, AB 1581, which would require schools to record the tribal affiliation of each new Native American student they enroll. Ramos says nine out of ten American Indian/Alaska Native students are not identified as such in California.
“That is a grave and obscenely ridiculous undercount of a population that is severely underserved,” Ramos explained in a summary of the bill, which was presented in a March 18 hearing. “The undercount results in inadequate allocation of resources to serve these students with the culturally responsive programs they need to succeed and thrive in school and the broader community.”
When the Commission supports bills like SB 891 and AB 1581, it offers more than just its name. It also provides subject-matter experts from all walks of life who work to make a difference for women in California.
Chacon suggests that the Commission could continue to play a positive role by looking at ways to improve coordination between the tribes and local police. The Commission continues to raise public awareness of the pain suffered by Native American communities due to murder, abduction and assault. “I don’t think the problem is widely known in California outside our community,” Chacon says. “I really believe MMIP is a human rights crisis that demands urgent, sustained efforts to protect tribal people.”
For more information on the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls visit https://women.ca.gov/
