State MMIW report delay raises concerns

It has been six years since Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul created a taskforce to study the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls, and some advocates are questioning why some of its original findings have not yet been released.

The MMIW (Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women) Taskforce consisted of 55 members, with representatives from all 12 organized tribal nations within Wisconsin, as well as criminal justice professionals and elected state officials from both sides of the political aisle.

Homicide is the third-leading cause of death for Indigenous girls and teens, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indigenous females are more than three times more likely to be murdered than white females, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

No formal state data exist on the issue, but Indigenous researchers in Wisconsin have so far identified about two dozen cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people dating back to 1980, with about half of them occurring in the last 10 years. Just two of the victims were men.

Kaul told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in 2021 one of the goals of the taskforce was to find a way to compile data on the issue, which he said is an important step in identifying how widespread the problem is, and then coming up with solutions. Another goal was to find ways to navigate jurisdictional issues between tribal police, county or state law enforcement, and the FBI.

His office that spring allocated $300,000 through grants from the federal Victims of Crime Act toward the MMIW Taskforce to hire a coordinator and a data analysis coordinator.

The taskforce completed a draft of the report in 2023.

Then the waiting started.

Some task force members worked with Kaul’s office on editing and revising the report. Andrea Lemke-Rochon was on that smaller committee for several months until she thought the work was finished.

“Then we heard nothing,” she said.

Lemke-Rochon is the cousin of Rae Elaine Tourtillott, who was murdered on the Menominee Reservation. Tourtillott was a 19-year-old mother of a newborn when she was last seen in 1986. Her body was discovered in April 1987.

Lemke-Rochon figured the rewrite was taking longer than anticipated.

But she and other task force members started growing concerned because they want the report released before Gov. Tony Evers leaves office, because the next governor could permanently bury the report.

Lemke-Rochon and others reached out to Kaul’s office last year with their concerns. She said the communication left her feeling like voices of Indigenous members were being removed.

“The government is acting like they know what’s best for us,” Lemke-Rochon said.

She and another task force member, Renee Gralewicz, understood from Kaul’s office some of the report needed to be rewritten to appeal enough to some conservative members of the state Legislature that they would go along with some of the recommendations. Both houses of the Legislature are in Republican control.

Lemke-Rochon said she has no problem if Kaul’s office wants to summarize the report for legislators. She said portions of the report may be unpalatable for some members, such as contending that issues of violence against Indigenous peoples largely stem from centuries of oppression by colonizers, and the generational trauma associated with that. But she doesn’t understand why a link to the full report could not be made public.

“Attorney General Kaul wants to turn our words into the colonizers’ words to make them palatable for the Legislature,” said Gralewicz, who serves as a peacemaker, or court official, for the Brothertown Indian Nation.

Lemke-Rochon said she and the other taskforce members owe it to survivors and their families to be straightforward in their assessments and provide the recommended tools law enforcement needs to address the issue.

Riley Vetterkind, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Justice, said Kaul and the office are committed to addressing the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls. He suggested work on the report is ongoing, with the “goals of representing the diverse views of task force members and tribal governments in Wisconsin on this complex issue, and of seeking to catalyze meaningful change,” he said.

Gralewicz and Lemke-Rochon said if the DOJ does not release the report soon they will petition tribal governments to release a version of it that reflects the work of Indigenous researchers.