The final version of a bill that extends Montana’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples task force, which is currently awaiting transmission to Gov. Greg Gianforte for consideration, includes amendments that would both decrease its funding and extend its sunset date.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tyson Running Wolf, Democrat, first brought forward the need for a state-wide task force to address the MMIP crisis in 2019, which the Legislature passed. Now four years and two legislative sessions later, the task force is extended for 10 additional years with funding to support the force’s employment.
The bill’s update comes after the White House released a proclamation declaring May 5, 2023 as the national Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness day.
However, his current bill, which originally requested $50,000 to keep the program going, saw the funding amount slashed to $5,000. Another amendment extended the sunset date from two years to 10 securing the task force for the next five sessions.
Since the Legislature originally approved the program in 2019, it has used the money to fund task force members and a tribal collaboration program.
During the session, lawmakers debated to cut funding down to $5,000. In the Senate Finance and Claims committee, which requested the amendments, lawmakers said the task force still had leftover funds of $18,750 granted by the Legislature during its 2021 session for tribal collaboration.
“The balance on this account wasn’t used all last time and so what I did was reduce that appropriation to $50,000 to $5,000 so that they can do a little bit of analysis through this next biennium of what’s going on with that,” said vice chair of the committee, Rep. Carl Glimm. “They need to get a little bit better plan on some sideboards for how that money is spent.”
The state’s Department of Justice’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen said there is a genuine need for a Montana MMIP program.
“I mean certainly tribal members are more apt to go missing,” Knudsen said. “That’s absolutely true but one thing that kind of surprised us, and this is just something we found out really within the last year, is that when you look at the numbers, it’s not just females that go missing off the reservation.”
Knudsen said that there are currently 170 active missing cases, which the DOJ tracks weekly. Out of the total active cases, 41 were identified to be Native in which 21 are female and 20 are male.
“We’ve actually got over a 99 percent case clearance rate, and that sounds wonky, but what that means is over 99 percent of these people we find and bring home,” Knudsen said.
In 2022, there were 1,972 people reported missing in Montana. Only 16 have not been located.
Along with the data analysis, the attorney general also mentioned the collaborative efforts the task force has been a part of such as the Looping in Native Communities grant program.
The program was created to help incorporate awareness and resources for tribal communities by meeting with the state’s tribes which allowed for opportunities for the public to share feedback and personal testimonies.
The Blackfeet Nation is the only Montana tribe that applied for funding, according to the attorney general. The Blackfeet Community College created its own community reporting portal in 2020 to assist with responsiveness when a person is first reported missing, according to the DOJ website.
According to the program’s website, the competitive grants are awarded to a tribal college to create and administer a central administration point for the Looping in Native Communities network, a program established to create a network that supports Montana tribes to identify, report, and find Native American persons who are missing. The grant from the Montana Department of Justice is a match of $25,000 to a single tribal college.
Sources from the DOJ said a reason why the Blackfeet tribe was the only tribe to apply for the grant program funding was due to lack of outreach and tribal preparation.
“So the task force required that in order to receive the funds, the tribal council for that tribe applicant had to pass a formal resolution that they knew a tribal entity was applying and that they were supporting the work for their tribe to be connected to and access and maintain the MMIPMT.com site,” said Dana Toole, the Special Services Bureau Chief in the DOJ. She said of the eight tribal governments in the state, five passed resolutions within their governmental body and three didnt.
Toole spoke with ICT and MTFP on the budget behind the task force and the Native Communities program
“That $50,000 is allocated to the looping and Native communities network for the task force starting July 1st, 2023, to give matching funds to tribal agencies to implement the looping and native communities network grant program.”
Other collaborative efforts made by the task force included a symposium of other organizations and programs that deal with missing persons and human trafficking both in tribal and urban settings that meet twice a year.
This story has been updated to correct the status of the MMIP Task Force bill.
This story is co-published by Montana Free Press and ICT, a news partnership that covers the Montana American Indian Caucus during the state’s 2023 legislative session. Funding is provided in part by the Headwaters Foundation.