An analysis published recently in the Criminal Justice Policy Review offers new insights and raises new questions about the national public health crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. — and the news media’s role in helping authorities solve these cases.
When found deceased, Native American women’s bodies are 135% more likely to be unidentified than the bodies of women of other racial or ethnic groups in the U.S., according to the analysis, which examines cases reported to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System from 2009 to 2018.
Researchers also find that women, regardless of their race or ethnicity, are much more likely to be found dead and unidentified in urban areas than in rural ones.
Nikolay Anguelov, one of the authors of the paper, says the findings underscore the need to correct the myth that Indigenous women tend to live in remote parts of the country such as Alaska or on tribal lands, including reservations such as the Navajo Nation reservation, which spreads across 27,000-plus square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Of the estimated 9.7 million people in the U.S. who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, 13% live on tribal lands, data from the 2020 U.S. Census shows.
Most Native American women live in urban areas, which is where they are most often reported missing and their remains, when discovered, are most often unidentified, says Anguelov, a political economist and associate professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
“This is the story you never hear,” he says. “There seems to be a migration out of native lands that’s making women vulnerable.”
Anguelov and coauthors Morgan Hawes, of Bridgewater State University, and Danielle Slakoff, of Sacramento State University, examined 7,454 cases of women of various demographic backgrounds who had been reported missing or whose remains had not yet been identified.
White women comprised 65% of those two types of cases in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs. About 2% involved Native American women aged 18 years and older, the researchers write in their paper, “Understanding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis: An Analysis of the NamUs Database,” published in March 2023.
Some of the other main takeaways:
- Regardless of race, women were 250% more likely to be found dead and categorized as unidentified in states with relatively high population densities than in states with lower population densities.
- About 48% of all unidentified women’s remains were found in the Northeast, and about 28% were in New England. Meanwhile, about 5% of cases came from the Mountain West, a region that includes Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming and is home to multiple reservations.
- There is “a lack of consistent and reliable information about missing persons at the local, state, and national level,” the researchers write. Ten states require authorities to input data on missing people into NamUs. Other states do so on a voluntary basis.
- Journalists play a key role in spurring change. “The media set the agenda with regard to important societal issues, and the media have the power to make an issue important by deeming it important,” the researchers write.
It’s unclear what exactly has driven Native American women into densely populated areas, although many of those who left their tribal communities probably sought independence, better job opportunities or a place to hide from abusive partners, Anguelov says.
Another unanswered question: Why are Native American women’s bodies least likely to be identified?
One of the many possible reasons: “Maybe they’re starting new far away and don’t keep in touch or they’re estranged, or their family isn’t alive,” Anguelov says.