This afternoon at 12:45, the Minnesota House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Finance and Policy Division will hear HF70, Mary Kunesh-Podein's bipartisan bill to create and fund a task force to address the national disgrace of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women.
Readers can watch the hearing here and read the committee documents here:
- Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation Business Committee Letter of Support - 1/28/2019
- Shelley Buck, President of Prairie Island Indian Community, Letter of Support - 1/28/2019
- Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls Report - 1/28/2019
But had Republicans had their way yesterday, the bill would have been referred to another committee--and not heard today. This House floor game with this bill illustrates clearly that the both House Republican caucuses are only interested in political ankle-biting, not in creating more transparency for citizens, by pulling a bill that's gotten media attention, from a committee the afternoon before it was to be heard.
One of the complaints Republicans are making is that under a new committee system, Greater Minnesotans planning to testify won't know about last-minute shuffles and will be unable to plan the long trip to St. Paul--or even follow the bills. MinnPost's Peter Callaghan looked at the fight in How new rules for the Minnesota House signal the downfall of democracy. Or not. (We have no problem following bills now--though it was difficult, as Callaghan writes, to learn what happened to language laid on the table and crunched--or not--into omnibus bills)
Apparently, the plans of Minnesotans coming from Northern Minnesota Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) reservations or Dakota communities along the Upper Minnesota River Valley didn't matter yesterday afternoon. Only the Republican time-wasting over talking points. At 6:05 into the session, Tony Albright, R-Prior Lake, moved to pull the bill from the committee in which it will be heard today at 12:45. That's less than a 24 hour notice:
It would not have been easy for the Republican minority to miss the rising profile of the bill. On Sunday night, KSTP aired Lawmakers to discuss creating Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:
Tuesday is a big day for Native Americans in Minnesota. The House of Representatives Public Safety Committee will hold the first hearing to consider legislation to create a Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
In 2017 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reported on JoJo Boswell, a 19-year old Native American woman from Minneapolis vanished in 2005.
"I just miss being able to give her a hug and give her a kiss," Boswell's mother, Geraldine Jackson, said. "She was only 19. She would just be beginning her life. She was just beginning. She was just starting out. She was just a child. She needs to come back so she can live and grow and be with us."
"JoJo's story is really the typical story of missing and murdered indigenous women across the nation," said Minnesota State Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein, a descendant of the Standing Rock Lakota Tribe.
Experts on the issue said it is difficult to know just how many Native American women are missing.
"I don't think we know, I certainly don't know" said Nicole Matthews, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition. ...
Here's the clip:
Last week, the Star Tribune's Editorial Board praised Kunesh-Podein's leadership in Minnesota bill is a good start to reducing, ending violence against American Indian women:
One of the latest top 10 lists Minnesota made didn’t garner adequate headlines. That’s a shame, because the ranking highlighted a grim public safety reality that all too often falls through the cracks of law enforcement and media coverage — the number of missing and murdered American Indian women.
Minnesota is home to seven Anishinaabe reservations and four Dakota tribal communities. And while there are other states with far larger indigenous populations, Minnesota came in ninth in a recent innovative analysis listing the states with the highest number of missing and murdered indigenous women, with the list relying mainly on data from 2010 to 2018. New Mexico had the ignominious achievement of being No. 1, with 78 cases, with Washington close behind at 71 and Arizona with 54. Minnesota ranked ninth with 20 cases, just ahead of Oklahoma, with 18.
Thankfully, conscientious and compassionate Minnesota legislative leaders are already aware of this shameful ranking and are working to protect Indian women and punish those who hurt them. Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein, DFL-New Brighton, stands out in particular for her hard work last session and again this year to pass a bill, HF 111, to create a “state task force on missing and murdered indigenous women.” One of its chief aims: better tracking these crimes in Minnesota, compiling the statistics to reliably indicate the scope of the violence and convening experts here to tailor strategies to reduce this violence.
There is growing bipartisan support for this bill, several Republicans having signed on as co-authors and influential Republican leaders such as Rep. Nick Zerwas of Elk River speaking out forcefully about the task force’s importance in a recent interview with an editorial writer. The Minnesota County Attorneys Association also is backing the bill, and understandably so. Many of these women live in poor or remote communities, but the crimes against them must not be overlooked or go unpunished.
The report listing the state rankings, available at tinyurl.com/y7c5hpxv, is from the respected Urban Indian Health Institute, a division of the Seattle Indian Health Board. It wields data — collected largely by its own researchers — that illuminates the public safety crisis highlighted in a 2017 movie, “Wind River.” The movie, which centers on the discovery of a frozen young Indian woman’s body on a Western reservation, heartbreakingly details the jurisdictional divisions between law enforcement agencies that can undermine investigations into deaths like this, especially on Native lands. The movie also drives home at its end a heartbreaking point, that missing and murdered Indian women are often underreported.
Both Republican House caucuses--old and new--are spending a lot of time whining about new temporary House rules, claiming that those of us watching at home can't follow the bills. Oh? There's the MyBills tool--and the Bill Search & Status search engine.
Indeed, we've got to wonder who in the recent past listened to the lightning round announcements by the House clerk or the Journal of the House as a means to track bills when the tools above are available.
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