Broken Promises
How America Abandoned Native Women
Native women face murder rates up to 10x the national average, and 40% experience sexual assault in their lifetimes.
Crimes often go unsolved due to jurisdictional confusion, underfunded tribal police, and slow response times.
Human traffickers linked to “man camps” (oil and mining projects) target Native women because they know cases rarely get investigated.
Media silence and poor data tracking make Native victims invisible to the broader public.
Solutions exist: funding tribal police, fixing legal gaps, better data, and holding industries accountable, but require political will.
Imagine if thousands of women from your community disappeared each year and no one seemed to care. Imagine your daughter, sister, or best friend vanishing and the police response was slow, confusing, or didn’t come at all.
For Native American families, this isn’t imagination. It’s daily reality.
Native women and girls are murdered at rates that should shock every American. On some reservations, the murder rate is ten times the national average. More than 40% of Native women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. The average age when they go missing? Just 19.
That means we are failing teenagers.
Yet most Americans have never even heard of this crisis. When white women go missing, news coverage can last for weeks. When Native women disappear, their stories fall into what advocates call a “void of silence.”
Why Is This Happening?
This didn’t happen overnight. History and modern systems have created a perfect storm:
Remote communities: Many reservations are hours away from the nearest police station. Imagine dialing 911 and being told help is three hours out.
Legal confusion: If a crime happens on Native land, who responds? Tribal police, the county sheriff, the state, the FBI? Often agencies argue while precious time is lost.
Urban challenges: 70% of Native Americans live in cities, where tribal jurisdiction doesn’t apply. Too often, that means even fewer resources when loved ones go missing.
Poverty and exploitation: With 1 in 4 Native Americans living in poverty, predators exploit economic desperation.
Generational trauma: Federal policies tore Native families apart for over a century. That instability is still felt today.
Invisibility: When Native women go missing, the lack of national coverage sends one message: society doesn’t see them.
Trafficking and “Man Camps”
The crisis isn’t random, it’s targeted.
Human trafficking networks prey on people who are vulnerable and unlikely to be protected. Native women fit both categories. In South Dakota, 40% of sex trafficking victims are Native women, even though Native people are less than 9% of the population.
And then there are “man camps.” These are temporary housing sites for oil, mining, or pipeline workers. When thousands of men flood into small communities with little oversight, violence and disappearances spike. Tribal police often can’t even arrest non-Native offenders on Native land, leaving women with little protection.
Why It Matters to Everyone
You might wonder: why should this matter if you don’t live near a reservation?
Because Native women are U.S. citizens. Their safety should matter as much as anyone else’s.
Because the same broken systems, underfunded police, messy jurisdiction, ignored victims, hurt other vulnerable groups too.
Because this crisis exposes a larger truth: America doesn’t always live up to its promise that every woman and child deserves safety.
When we fix these systems for Native women, we make all communities safer.
What Needs to Change
We already know the solutions. What’s missing is the will to act.
Untangle the legal maze so no one wastes hours debating who’s in charge.
Fund tribal police so they have the same resources as other departments.
Collect real data: you can’t solve a problem if you don’t track it.
Address root causes like poverty and lack of services that make people vulnerable.
Fix media coverage so Native victims don’t disappear from public view.
Hold industries accountable when their projects bring increased risks to Native women.
Small Steps, Slow Progress
There have been glimmers of hope. Congress has started funding tribal police for missing persons cases. States are building databases to track Native women. The Department of Justice launched a task force.
But progress is slow and every day of delay means more women disappear.
The Bottom Line
Native women are being murdered and trafficked at catastrophic rates because America has made them vulnerable and invisible. Predators know they can get away with it—and too often, they do.
This crisis is not unsolvable. We know the problems. We know the solutions. What we lack is action.
Every missing Native woman is not just a family tragedy but a national failure of justice.
It’s time to end the silence.
Want to help? Learn the names and stories of missing Native women in your area. Support organizations working on this issue. Call your representatives about funding tribal law enforcement. Awareness is the first step toward justice.