This year was a first step towards establishing the scope and severity of MMIWG2 in this region based on our Year 1 findings for To’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’. We hope that over the course of our Year One report, we have made it clear how loved missing and murdered women, girls, and two spirit people are; that their humanity was both their source of their resilience and a component of their experiences as targets of violence. They were mothers, aunties, grandmothers, siblings, cousins, and so many more important roles, and they deeply counted in the lives of their loved ones. The absence after they are taken is a backdrop to their families’ lives forever after.

In summary, we have taken the first step in diagnosing the crisis of MMIWG2 in Northern California, drawing from both quantitative and qualitative data points in order to do so. What we found in the region resonates with existing literature on how Indigenous women are targeted for violence by abusers and the State alike (Anderson et al. 2018, Ambler 2014, Bailey & Shayan 2016, Bingham et al. 2014, Bourgeois 2015, Boyer & Kampouris 2014, Bubar & Thurman 2004, Hargreaves 2015, Lavell et al. 2016, Luna-Firebaugh 2006, McGillvray 1999). We completed Year One of our multi-year study apparatus, and over the coming years, we will continue to flesh out some of the conclusions and recommendations we proposed in this initial report. In the meantime, we offer the templates included in the Appendix for use by other tribes and stakeholders interested in tracking and intervening in MMIWG2.

In order to capture the wide variety of experiences and diversity across cases included in the 105 cases logged in the Northern California region, we structured this report around the systemic inequities, jurisdictional complexities, and social stigmas that endangered the lives of Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people when they were living, and that complicated the process of finding justice after they were taken. We detailed the long-term ripple effects that the loss of MMIWG2 leaves in their families and described how survivors and those left behind fight back against the victim blaming, abuse culture, and general lack of support services that characterized their search for closure. Law enforcement and the justice system were both implicated in these failures, yet stakeholders from all backgrounds identified them as instrumental in intervening in this crisis. Law enforcement officials themselves committed to doing so within the scope of their individual jurisdictions, and we have detailed how families filled these gaps with their own efforts of resilience and remembrance in

the absence of state action on MMIWG2.

We concluded our report with a consideration of identified gaps and needs as stated by families, survivors, law enforcement officers and justice system representatives. We offered recommendations across eight categories including data, interagency coordination, investigatory resources, law enforcement and justice system accountability, legislative considerations, support services, protective factors, and community strength-building. We encourage readers to consider these recommendations in light of the rich contextual and evidentiary bases for making them included in this report.

We have also made all research and conclusions publicly available as well as sharing said data with other tribal governments.

The Yurok Tribal Court’s To’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’ (I will see you again in a good way) Project report represents nearly two years of bringing together the voices of survivors, family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women & girls and two-spirit people, tribal court staff, and researchers to fight for justice and safety for Indigenous women and youth in California. The groundbreaking report contains a series of updates on the development of California’s first MMIWG2 database and the creation of a comprehensive protocol to address these complex cases.

“The goal of this project is to build tribe-centered systems of investigation and stronger circles of protection, so that deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people will be accounted for and someday prevented entirely,” said Yurok Chief Justice Abby Abinanti, who is also a former San Francisco Superior Court Judicial Officer. “As you will see in the report, we have made much pro-gress toward achieving these objectives.”

According to the report the project is constructing a collaborative and exhaustive approach to re-sponding to MMIWG2 cases. From investigation to prosecution, sovereign tribal nations should have a primary role in every stage of the process. No one is more committed to pursuing justice and healing for our victims and their families. As a result of this project, non-tribal government officials, district attorneys’ offices and police whom participated, are now more informed about this important issue.

Led by the Yurok Tribal Court, the To’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’ Project’s year-two progress report focuses on five new priority areas, including: foster care & violence against youth, mental health impacts, intergenerational trauma, culturally informed ideas of justice and healing, and fami-ly and survivor centered justice and healing. The full report can be found here: (Insert link)

In the last year, the number of MMIWG2 cases since 1900 increased from 165 to 183 in Califor-nia, which is 1.3 times higher than the average number of cases per year. None of the new 18 cases have been resolved. Due to several factors, such as barriers to data collection, it is believed that these statistics represent a small fraction of actual number of cases. “If the rate were applied to each year since 1900, it is likely there would be over 2,000 cases across California, not accounting for likely spikes due to slavery, massacres, forced removals, and boarding schools,” according to the report. Nearly 60 percent of the cases originated in Northern California, between San Francis-co to the Oregon border. Of those cases, 22% are missing, 62% are murdered, and 16% are status unknown. As reflected in the year two report, the data represent thousands of people, the majority of whom were murdered. “It is impossible to quantify the impact of their loss, what they meant to their family and community, and all they could have contributed,” according to the authors of the report.

A trio of databases presently track missing persons cases, including the federal government’s Na-tional Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), which until only recently did not have the capacity to include victims’ tribal affiliations, and to this day lacks such information for the majority of cases entered. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is equally flawed as is the State of California’s version of this digital tool. Through their community-based data gathering practices, Sovereign Bodies Institute has been able to create the most thorough data source on MMIWG2 statewide and internationally, documenting the data points that are informed by partners such as impacted families and the Yurok Tribal Court.

Currently, 62% of all missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people in the state are not documented in any of the state and federal data repositories. Of the cases documented in the re-port, 41 involve mothers of children, who must carry the lifelong impact of the theft of their moth-er. In the words of Christina Lastra, daughter of Humboldt County MMIW Alicia Lara, “When is this going to stop? When are you going to recognize that we count? When are you going to speak the truth? When are we going to have closure? When are we going to have justice? What is it going to take?”

Most commonly, non-Indians perpetrate the murders and obductions of Native women, girls and two spirit people. Frequently, these crimes are committed far from tribal victims’ homes because the perpetrators intentionally capitalize on the minimal interjurisdictional coordination. For exam-ple, California’s MMIWG2 victims represent 48 different tribes, and more than half (52%) of tribes are located far from the state. This crime takes place within a massive area with many political boundaries, which supports the call for a coordinated multijurisdictional response protocol. The Yurok Tribal Court’s procedure proposed would connect personnel and resources from tribal, fed-eral and state courts, victim services as well as police and social services departments.

“There is an especially urgent need for more federal participation in these cases because so many involve multiple states and jurisdictions,” explained Judge Abinanti. “This holistic, multidiscipli-nary approach is required because families of victims need services in real-time and victims need assistance if or when they are able to make it home.”

Mentioned in the year-one report, additional advancements have been made in expanding concur-rent jurisdiction arrangements, such as the joint Family Wellness Courts led by Yurok Chief Justice Abinanti and the presiding judges of the Del Norte County and Humboldt County Courts.

In the 2021 report, the To’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’ Project team extended the scope of the data collection component of the project to include missing and murdered indigenous boys and men, who are also disproportionately represented in the statistics. Thirty-three cases in Northern California were selected as a preliminary sample. In year three, these cases and others will be fully analyzed, the results will be included in a final report on the project.

The Yurok Tribal Court initiated the To’ Kee Skuy’ Soo Ney-Wo-Chek’ Project to improve out-comes of MMIWG2 cases in the state and eventually the entire United States. The Project is a col-laboration between the Yurok Tribal Court and Sovereign Bodies Institute. In this effort, the Court has contracted with tribal member Dr. Blythe K. George who holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Merced. The US Department of Justice’s Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) grant is the primary funding source for the three-year undertaking. A final report will be released in 2022 when the project is completed.

Year Three is expected to be published in July 2022.