U.S. launches anti-violence effort for indigenous women, girls

U.S. launches anti-violence effort for indigenous women, girls
By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – U.S. President Donald Trump launched a task force on Tuesday to help protect Native American women and children, calling the rate of violence among indigenous people “heartbreaking.”

The task force aims to improve coordination and communication among federal, state and tribal authorities in response to cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and children, the White House said in a statement.

Native American women in some tribal communities are 10 times more likely than the average American to be murdered, it said, and the initiative called Operation Lady Justice is an “aggressive, government-wide strategy” to address the crisis.

“The statistics are sobering and heartbreaking,” Trump said at a White House ceremony where he signed an executive order creating the task force. “Too many are still missing and their whereabouts are unknown.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” he added.

Research by the National Institute of Justice, a government research agency, has found more than four out of five American Indian and Alaska Native women – more than 1.5 million women – have experienced violence in their lifetime.

More than 5,700 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center, a government data agency.

American Indian women are two-and-a-half times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women of all other races, while one in three reports having been raped, the U.S. Department of Justice has said.

“It’s imperative that this changes, in a manner that we’re looked at not as the second-class citizens but looked like, looked at as any other group that exists within the continent of the United States,” said Kevin DuPuis, chairman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, at the White House event.

“It’s very, very important that we, as a people, have a true identity. And when we lose our women and we lose our children that goes with them,” he said.

Several leading Native American rights organizations did not respond to requests for comment on the new task force.

Law enforcement and prosecutions are often hampered by a maze of jurisdictions and justice systems based on such factors as whether a crime occurred on tribal land or whether the victim or the accused is a tribal member.

Last week the government announced an initiative to spend $1.5 million for law enforcement to help coordinate Native American missing persons cases.

Nearly seven million Native Americans live in the United States making up about 2% of the population, according to census figures.

Trump’s signing of the order came two days before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday which commemorates a harvest celebration shared by Native Americans and European settlers in the 17th century.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Chris Michaud (Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

FEMA tells U.S. states to improve their own disaster relief efforts

A family that wanted to remain anonymous moves belongings from their home flooded by Harvey in Houston, Texas August 31, 2017.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – State and local governments need to become more self-sufficient in handling major disasters like Hurricane Harvey, FEMA Administrator Brook Long said in a televised interview on Sunday.

Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, Long said the federal support is intended to be a “ray of hope, a bridge to kick-start recovery,” and state and local governments need to do more on their own. They should not expect the federal government to make their citizens whole after major disasters, he said.

“We need elected officials at all levels to sit down and hit the reset button and make sure they have everything they need to increase levels of self-sufficiency,” Long said.

He called the massive devastation “a wakeup call for local and state officials,” saying they needed to fully fund their own emergency management offices and have rainy day funds set aside for such emergencies. “They can’t depend only on federal emergency management,” he said following pointed calls by Houston officials for FEMA to quickly increase staffing in the city and provide relief funds.

Long declined to offer an amount the White House would request Congress to provide for additional emergency assistance in the wake of Harvey. Earlier Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the cost of the storm had risen to between $150 billion and $180 billion.

Houston is making progress on several fronts to recover from Harvey, resuming city services and helping get people into housing and out of emergency shelters, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in separate comments on Face the Nation on Sunday.

“This is a can-do city. We’re not going to engage in a pity party,” said Turner. “People are taking care of each other.” Speaking from the city’s convention center, which once housed 10,000 people fleeing from flooding, he said there are “significantly less than 2,000” people now staying at the shelter.

 

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)