A new report says the scourge of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada and the U.S. mainland also has been devastating for Native Hawaiian girls and women
ByJENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
December 14, 2022
Makanalani Gomes, of AF3IRM, a feminist and decolonization organization, holds a fist in the air as she discusses a report on missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022 in Honolulu.
The Associated Press
HONOLULU -- The average profile of a missing child in Hawaii: 15 years old, female, from the island of Oahu and Native Hawaiian. That's according to a report released Wednesday that says much more disaggregated racial and gender data is needed to combat the scourge of missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women.
Key findings of the report, the first of its kind released by a task force created by the state Legislature last year to investigate the issue, include that more than a quarter of missing girls in Hawaii are Native Hawaiian and that members of the U.S. military play an outsized role in the sexual exploitation of children in the state.
Similar studies have shown that Indigenous women in Canada and the U.S. mainland are murdered or go missing at rates disproportionate to their size of the population. While the disturbing trend held for Native Hawaiian girls, a comparable, reliable statistic for Native Hawaiian women eluded the task force because of lacking data, said Nikki Cristobal, the report's principal investigator. The task force was created amid renewed calls for people to pay more attention to missing and killed Indigenous women and girls and other people of color after the 2021 disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white woman, triggered widespread national media coverage and extensive searches by law enforcement. Petito’s body was later found in Wyoming.
One of the difficulties in addressing the issue, is that determining the true scale can be difficult because many cases have gone unreported or have not been well-documented or tracked. Public and private agencies also don’t always collect statistics on race. And some data groups together Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, making it nearly impossible to identify the degree to which Hawaii’s Indigenous people are affected. About 20% of the state’s population is Native Hawaiian.
Several states formed similar panels after a groundbreaking report by the Urban Indian Health Institute found that of more than 5,700 cases of missing and slain Indigenous girls in dozens of U.S. cities in 2016, only 116 were recorded in a Justice Department database.
Wyoming’s task force determined that 710 Indigenous people disappeared in that state between 2011 and September 2020 and that Indigenous people made up 21% of homicide victims even though they make up only 3% of the population. In Minnesota, a task force led to the creation of a dedicated office to provide ongoing attention and leadership on the issue.
Agencies such as the state, police departments and the military need to do better at collecting and retaining disaggregated data, Cristobal said.
“Native Hawaiian women and girls are displaced not only through violence, but also through data collection across departments and across islands,” she said.
One of the more disturbing findings of the report was the role of servicemembers in the abuse of children. Publicly available data in 2022 showed that 38% of those arrested for soliciting sex online from law enforcement posing as a 13-year-old during undercover operations were active-duty military personnel, the report said.
In response to a request for comment on the findings, a Department of Defense duty officer said late in the day Wednesday that the message was being forwarded to the right person.
Violence such as “selling and buying girls for sex on military bases, hotels, game rooms, massage parlors and in our own communities," impact Native Hawaiians at much higher rates than other populations, Cristobal said.
The findings are startling but not new, said Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women and the task force's co-chair.
“Instead, it vindicates and validates what Native Hawaiians, sex trafficking and gender-based violence service providers and feminist activists have been saying all along and have been told that they were exaggerating or manipulating facts or just simply providing an anecdote,” she said.
HAWAII'S SILENT SCREAMS: Shocking report reveals horrific truth behind missing and murdered native women
By Meenakshi Sengupta
Dec 15, 2022
Mary Johnson, an Indigenous woman, went missing in 2020 and is yet to be found (FBI)
HAWAII, US: The ‘Missing and Murdered Native Hawaiian Women and Girls’ (MMNHWG) report, published on December 14, provides new insight into a growing problem in the islands. The average profile of a missing child from the island of Oahu and Native Hawaiian is "15-year-old, female,” according to the report. The report also reveals "indigenous women and girls, including Native Hawaiians, experience violence at much higher rates than other populations in the United States." They are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women from other ethnic groups.
According to the shocking report, 43% of sex trafficking victims are Kānaka Maoli girls, who are trafficked in Waikīkī, O‘ahu. The report also contains worrying statistics from law enforcement operations. For example, it states 38 percent of those arrested for “soliciting sex from a thirteen-year-old online through Operation Keiki Shield are active-duty military personnel.” Besides, "25 percent of the offenders arrested in March 2019 operation, which was not a 'military op' and which was the only documented non-military Operation Keiki Shield operation on O‘ahu since 2019, were military men," the report adds.
Nikki Cristobal, the MMNHWG report’s principal investigator, said that there have been similar studies that show indigenous women in Canada and the US mainland are murdered or go missing at rates disproportionate to the size of the actual population. She added that a comparable, reliable statistic for Native Hawaiian women ignored the task force, which was created after people demanded more attention to missing and killed indigenous women and girls and other people of color after the 2021 disappearance of Gabby Petito, because of a lack of data, as per The Seattle Times.
Primary causes and challenges
The outlet states that the biggest challenge is that many cases don't get reported, and those that do are not well-documented or tracked. Moreover, public and private agencies don’t always collect statistics on race. The lack of disaggregated data is complicated by the inconsistencies in racial definitions when race data is collected. The Seattle Times reports that about 20 percent of the state’s population is Native Hawaiian.
Kerri Colfer, who is Tlingit and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s senior native affairs adviser, said she has come across situations where law enforcement officers have victim-blamed Native women and were not prompt enough to investigate or declare them missing. She said, “That often means that the families end up leading the searches for their missing relatives before law enforcement even tries to get involved. And obviously, that is retraumatizing for families,” according to The Guardian
What's the cause?
A lack of coverage. Dr Patty Loew, professor at Northwestern University’s journalism school and director of its Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, said the lack of coverage is driven by many factors, including the misclassification of Native women. He told The Guardian, "I think news prefers people that sort of stay within the system and people of color who are assimilatory and want equal rights – that’s something we understand. But I think reporters don’t really understand sovereignty, and people who have a political identity that exists outside the mainstream.”
The case of Mary Johnson
The disappearance of Tulalip tribal member Mary Johnson received very little attention. She was last seen on November 25, 2020, and was reported missing on December 9, 2020, by her estranged husband. There has been no update about her whereabouts so far. Nona Blouin, Johnson’s older sister, told CNN in 2021, "If that was a little White girl out there or a White woman, I’m sure they would have had helicopters, airplanes and dogs and searches – a lot of manpower out there – scouring where that person was lost. None of that has happened for our sister.”
The disparity
Commenting on the tremendous publicity of cases like Petito, including Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson, journalist Mara Schiavocampo said, “This actually has real-life implications for women of color. Why? This makes them less safe because perpetrators, predators, know that if you want to get away with murder, you seek the victim that no one is going to look for.”
The Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center reports that white people are more likely to have an article written about them while they are still alive. Approximately 76 percent of articles written about white victims are published while the victim is still alive, but 42 percent of articles written about indigenous victims come out after they are found dead.
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