Indigenous Affairs

Legislature calls on attorney general to create new missing and murdered Indigenous people task force

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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T). The New Mexico Legislature has asked Attorney General Raúl Torrez to create a new task force focused on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people after a memorial containing the request passed in the final hour of the legislative session, which concluded at noon today.Senate Joint Memorial 2 cleared the House on Thursday morning after passing in the Senate last week. 

A spokeswoman for Torrez didn’t respond to a question from New Mexico In Depth about whether he plans to act on lawmakers’ request. Unlike a bill, the memorial isn’t enforceable. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham quietly dissolved a task force dedicated to finding solutions to the crisis in mid-2023. 

Her staff said the group achieved its objectives and the state is carrying forward its recommendations. But some task force members believed their work was just beginning, and a handful of impacted families protested the governor’s decision in October.

Indigenous Affairs

New Mexico isn’t doing enough to end missing and murdered Indigenous people crisis, lawmakers say

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Lawmakers and advocates this week said an advisory council on missing and murdered Indigenous people Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration announced Tuesday isn’t a good replacement for a task force disbanded earlier this year, and questioned why state officials aren’t asking for more money to confront the crisis. Asked by lawmakers Tuesday about what the state is doing, Indian Affairs Secretary-designate James Mountain pointed in part to the advisory council, which he said will hold state agencies accountable as they carry out recommendations made last year by the defunct task force. 

But Mountain’s update didn’t satisfy lawmakers or Indigenous families who have lost loved ones. 

“We’re fighting for our families,” Vangie Randall-Shorty told Mountain and other officials during public comment of the Legislature’s Indian Affairs Committee in Albuquerque. Her son, Zachariah Juwaun Shorty, was found dead from gunshot wounds on the Navajo Nation in July 2020. “These are human beings and you don’t take this serious. Come on, get it together for us.

Indigenous Affairs

On the Navajo Nation, a daughter yearns for her mother, missing for five years

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Julia Vicente always walked the same route home from visiting her friend. She’d traverse about a mile of Shiprock, a town on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico’s northwestern corner, along a dirt road through a neighborhood, bordered by hills and an irrigation canal on one side and a busy highway on the other. She’d turn onto a well-worn path that cuts around and through a few fields before coming out behind a gas station. She’d cross the highway. From there, her house was straight down a tree-lined street.

Indigenous Affairs

Native advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous people denounce Lujan Grisham’s appointment to lead Indian Affairs

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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s appointment of a former San Ildefonso Pueblo governor to lead the state’s Indian Affairs Department could be in peril as members of the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force, and a Navajo state senator, say they will fight his nomination.The appointment of James R. Mountain to head an agency tasked with addressing violence against Native American women despite a rape charge against him 15 years ago, later dismissed, provoked outrage and sometimes tearful reactions from members during a task force meeting on Wednesday. The task force is one of four initiatives prominently highlighted on the agency’s website. 

Two members were considering resigning from the task force if Mountain is confirmed, they said, and other members supported seeking a meeting with Lujan Grisham to protest Mountain’s nomination.“Our governor of the state needs to know that we are not OK with this,” Nambé Pueblo victim/legal advocate Chastity Sandoval said. 

On Thursday, Lujan Grisham’s Director of Communications Maddy Hayden said the governor does not intend to withdraw Mountain’s nomination. 

“We hope that those who are leveling these concerns would respect the judicial process and acknowledge the results,” Hayden wrote over email. Mountain’s appointment, announced by the governor on Feb. 3, must be confirmed by the state Senate while in session. The 2023 legislative session ends in three weeks, on March 18.  

Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty said the task force committed to create a safe space for sexual assault survivors and build trust with families of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and expressed dismay over the nomination.“I understand that we don’t have control over that decision, but what control we have is how we create a safe space in this task force and how we want to move forward to the work for the families,” Crotty said.