Cantwell has long championed expanding protections in VAWA and boosting resources to combat the crisis of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women & People
SEATTLE, WA – Today, on the 30-year anniversary of the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) released the following statement:
“The 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act reminds us that we must be vigilant to ensure perpetrators of violence are held accountable and survivors receive the care they deserve. Passage and reauthorization of VAWA has been a historic achievement, but more needs to be done.” Sen. Cantwell said. “We need to secure more law enforcement and public safety resources now to help Tribes protect their families and communities.”
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time, Sen. Cantwell voted to pass VAWA in 1994. She has continued to support reauthorizing and expanding this important law, such as by strengthening protections for indigenous women and children. According to the National Institute for Justice, over 1.5 million or 84% of American Indian and Alaska Native women report experiencing violence in their lifetime. To help tribal communities protect against domestic violence, Sen. Cantwell championed key provisions in the 2013 and 2022 VAWA reauthorizations, which secured Tribes’ power to seek justice against non-native perpetrators of domestic violence against Native women and children.
In the State of Washington, one in eight adults report having been injured by an intimate partner, although incidents of domestic violence are widely underreported.
The Seattle Indian Health Board’s Urban Indian Health Institute found that Seattle and Tacoma have some of the highest rates of missing and murdered Native women and girls in a report on 71 urban areas across the country. According to the Washington State Patrol, there are at least 122 unsolved cases with an Indigenous victim as of April 24, 2024.
The Violence Against Women Act was most recently reauthorized for five years in the FY2022 annual appropriations bill. The legislation provided $575 million for domestic violence prevention and prosecution programs – a $486.5 million increase in funding from the previous year. The 2022 VAWA reauthorization also:
- Preserved advancements made in previous reauthorizations, i.e. protections for indigenous women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants.
- Strengthened rape prevention and education efforts and services for young survivors.
- Increased access to programs for survivors in rural areas, survivors needing culturally informed services, LGBTQ+ survivors, and voluntary community-based restorative practice services.
- Provided support for legal services funding and trauma-informed law enforcement responses.
- Improved the response to sexual violence, including grants to promote the training of sexual assault forensic examiners.
- Expanded special criminal jurisdiction by tribal courts to cover non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault, child abuse co-occurring with domestic violence, stalking, sex trafficking, and assaults on tribal law enforcement officers on tribal lands.
During the 2013 VAWA reauthorization, Sen. Cantwell championed key provisions to ensure tribes could continue to have jurisdiction over dating violence and domestic violence crimes and violations of tribal protection orders, restoring tribal jurisdiction over violent and dangerous crimes such as child and sexual abuse, sex trafficking and stalking, and providing tribes with more resources to improve and build public safety programs within their communities.
In 2019, Sen. Cantwell re-introduced Savanna’s Act to improve coordination between federal, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies to better respond to cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and people. The legislation also increased resources for tribal governments, data collection, and information sharing. Sen. Cantwell’s Savanna’s Act was signed into law in October 2020.
In May 2023, at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Sen. Cantwell pressed U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to dedicate additional federal resources to establish a federal office in Washington state dedicated to investigating cases of missing and murdered Native women in the Pacific Northwest. That same week, Sen. Cantwell sent a letter to President Biden urging him to secure additional Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU) agents in Washington state.
In June 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the creation of the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Regional Outreach Program, which will permanently place five dedicated Assistant U.S. Attorneys and five MMIP coordinators to help resolve missing and murdered Indigenous women and people cases throughout the country, including dedicated MMIP personnel in Eastern Washington. In May 2024, the Department of Justice swore in a new attorney who will be based in Yakima as part of the program.
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