SEATTLE — Members of the Native American community say missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are not just a nationwide crisis, but a data crisis as well.
Esther Lucero, CEO of the Seattle Indian Health Board, said the organization wants to improve the reporting of crimes against women and girls.
“We’re missing the opportunity to capture this data,” she said. “And without data, it’s challenging to get political institutions and government systems to respond with resources to address the problem.”
It’s a personal issue for her. She shared the story of how when she was 10 years old, her aunt was murdered.
The health board's research division, the Urban Indian Health Institute, recently published a study that cites 5,712 reported missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in 2016; only 116 made it into the federal NamUs database.
It’s why the health board is holding events to train people on how to enter cases into the system. They want tragedies in their community to be represented not just anecdotally, but statistically as well.
“I think it’s time for us to call out these data systems that have heavy impact on where resources are allocated,” Lucero said.
The UIHI report is available here, as well as a guide supplied by the Seattle Indian Health Board for entering data.