Last month, a federal commission aimed at addressing the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous people finalized a report to Congress. That’s after the Not Invisible Act Commission heard from people across the country over 18 months who shared their experiences, expertise and recommendations.
There’s a chapter in the report dedicated specifically to issues facing Alaska’s Indigenous people.
Michelle Dimmert is a longtime tribal judge and attorney in Alaska who was one of the commissioners of the report. Dimmert is Tlingit and is a member of the Klawock tribe. She says violence against Alaska Native women has been prevalent for decades, beginning in the days of Russian colonization.
Listen:
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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Dimmert: Over time, Alaska Native women have been targets of violence, whether it was from the people from Russia or the United States. What happened is that the traders that were in, you know, early contact really didn’t value the lives of Native women. And there’s historical records of Native women actually being used as target practice. This is on file with the Alaskan Native Women’s Resource Center. And there’s information in some museums out towards the Aleutian Chain. And then fast forward, Alaska is purchased by the United States from Russia in (1867). We protected our women and children as best we could, but as there was more contact with the outside and less power recognized of our Native villages, the more problems that we had.
We see that a lot in the 1950s on up where Alaska became a state. During that time, the policy of the federal government was termination, they wanted to terminate tribes. And so Alaska, having become a state during that termination policy, jurisdictional issues were not something that the federal government wanted to be encumbered with. And so they created a law called Public Law 280, that’s what everyone calls it, which essentially transferred the jurisdiction that the federal government had to the state of Alaska. And it sort of was a way for the federal government to absolve themselves of the crimes or any of the jurisdictional issues that might be confronted.
Wesley Early: So why do you feel Alaska has unique issues that warrant further consideration in the federal MMIP report, having its own chapter?
MD: Well, for one, Alaska was formulated with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, rather than keeping the reservations. We had over 150 reservations prior to ANCSA being enacted in the ’70s. And that act, essentially, transferred all tribal land to for-profit corporations. And so that really created a lot of confusion about what a tribe’s authority was, even though tribes existed, and how ANCSA… it just created a lot of confusion. So that’s one factor.
The other factor is that we have the geography. We have a huge amount of land. And I think the Tribal Law and Order Commission report in 2013 said there was 1.4 law enforcement per million acres. So where are those law enforcement? They’re in hub communities, and it makes it difficult to get out to the village. Sometimes it’s hours, days. Sometimes we’ve heard of even weeks where a crime has been committed, or maybe a suspicious death has happened, and there’s no immediate response because of weather or personnel issues.
You know, there’s just a variety of factors that could come into play. People who are inclined to commit violence, they catch up on these things. And, you know, they target Native women, because there’s no one that’s going to hold them accountable.
WE: And the report also calls into question how well Alaska has investigated suspicious deaths, recommending a review by the Department of Justice. As a longtime tribal judge, how effective do you feel the state has been in addressing missing and murdered Indigenous people’s cases? And how do you think they could improve?
MD: I think there’s really good people in the Department of Public Safety who are really committed to doing what’s right. But there’s also a huge shortage of people who are able to properly investigate some of these crimes. There’s, you know, a lot of those positions are hard to fill. There’s a lot of turnover. And so people don’t feel connected to the communities that they’re within. So they don’t build that trust. And, you know, unfortunately, we heard so many times in our hearings, “Why bother calling the police? Nothing happens. It’s just traumatizing to us.” So Alaska really is challenged because of the jurisdictional scheme that we have, but we’re trying to change that.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
