A South Dakota senate committee is advancing a bill that directs their Division of Criminal Investigation to prepare guidelines for collecting information on and investigating the cases of missing and murdered indigenous women.
Native American women experience some of the highest rates of homicide in the United States. Data on missing and murdered indigenous women is difficult to gather.
Republican State Senator Lynn DiSanto is the prime sponsor of the bill. She says the bill addresses a jurisdictional issue.
“This is a step toward saying, ‘We want it reported, we want to be made aware of it. These are South Dakotans," DiSanto says. "Not only do we have that break down, but we have a breakdown of other local government entities, sheriff’s departments as well as FBI, and we just want to make sure everybody is on the same page so that we can get a handle on this problem.”
The bill passes out of the Senate Judiciary committee unanimously.
Republican State Representative Tamara St. John is Dakota from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. St. John says the intention is to put a spotlight on the issue.
“You can just imagine what it feels like to be—to not know what happened to your loved one and that feeling that those that are missing are not that important,” St. John says. “To put that personalization on it, that these are people that are sisters, a lot of them are mothers, that data is really important so we know what we’re dealing with nationally.”
St. John says this bill is partly in response to stalled talks in congress with Savanna’s Act. That bill, which passed the US Senate, requires the Department of Justice to keep an online database of missing and murdered Native Americans.