Panelist Dr. Bridget Groat, PhD, spoke to how the history of colonization has impacted MMIW. Of Native Iñupiaq, Yup’ik, Alutiiq and Dena’ina descent, Dr. Groat is an enrolled member of Naknek Native Village in Alaska, where she grew up. As an assistant professor at California State University Channel Islands, Dr. Groat built the school’s Native American and Indigenous Studies coursework.  

According to Dr. Groat, many Indigenous societies across Northern America were matrilineal before European colonization. Bloodlines were traced through mothers, women owned houses and children belonged to their mothers and her family. In these societies, women were revered. Domestic violence was uncommon, and women in Indigenous communities lived with more agency than European women at the time. In more male-centric Indigenous communities, women still held significant power and did not take a position of inferiority. 

“The arrival of paternalistic settlers began to change gender dynamics in Indigenous communities,” Dr. Groat said. “Indigenous women paid the price as settler attitudes began to change the status of women.”

In the 16th century, before California’s statehood, Indigenous men and women were separated and forced into servitude and religious conversion under the Spanish Mission system, which ranged from San Diego, through Oak Park, to past San Francisco in Northern California. Women were vulnerable to sexual assault by Spanish soldiers as disease ravaged their communities. 

Then, as the United States emerged as a new nation, federal Indian law policies seized Indigenous lands, confining tribes to reservations. Government “treaties” robbed Natives of their ancestral homelands and built the framework for systemic poverty. In the 19th through 20th centuries, more than 532 government-funded, often church-ran Indian boarding schools operated across the country, intending to eliminate native language, spirituality and culture. 

There, children suffered extensive physical, sexual and psychological trauma as many were forcibly taken from their families. According to a recent federal investigation, “at least 973 Indigenous children died in schools operated or supported by the government.” Yet these are only the deaths that could be confirmed by historical records and DNA analysis. Mass, unmarked graves, with victims’ bodies stacked upon one another, are still being discovered at boarding school sites today. 

After it achieved statehood, California’s history remained inseparable from Native American genocide. The California Gold Rush, which lasted from 1848 to 1855, depended on the takeover of Indigenous lands and the enslavement of its peoples. Indigenous peoples were subjugated as laborers on ranches and miners’ land. 

Before 1848, more than 150,000 Native Americans inhabited California as they had for thousands of years, with tribes of distinct cultures, community practices and over 80 spoken languages. By the 1870s, only 20% of Indigenous people remained. While a majority died due to land removal and settler-introduced disease, researchers report that the state not only sanctioned the killing of Native Americans but spent about $1.7 million then, the equivalent of $68 million today, to encourage it. It is estimated that between “9,000 and 16,000 were murdered in cold blood.”

According to Dr. Groat, the toll of genocide manifests in highly vulnerable Indigenous communities today. 96% of violence against Indigenous women happens at the hands of non-Native individuals, but up until the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, non-Native people could not be prosecuted on tribal land. The Safety for Indian Women Act, Title IX of VAWA, finally established federal responsibility to assist tribes in safeguarding women’s lives.

Increased state and federal legislation in conjunction with the Safety for Indian Women Act has increased access to services that ensure victims’ safety and aid them in rebuilding their lives. Fewer people are experiencing domestic violence, and there has also been a decrease in cases that go unreported. Yet Dr. Groat noted that the stereotypes that perpetuate injustice against Native American and Alaska Native women persist. 

“Law enforcement often turns a blind eye and fails to take reports seriously,” Dr. Groat said. “They do little to assist in the search for missing native people. Media rarely picks up a story of missing Native people, and usually there’s a negative spin on the story.”

That “negative spin” develops through how community members process the story.

It extends through the questions asked by detectives that are then circulated by the media—a culture focused on her rather than what he did. What was she wearing? What was she doing? Why was she drinking, why was she out late at night? Victim blaming slows the response of law enforcement and the criminal justice process.

“The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is a direct result of limitations placed on tribal authority to prosecute non-Natives for crimes committed on tribal land,” Dr. Groat said.

This includes the “unconscionable,” in Dr. Groat’s words, resource disparities reservations experience regarding public safety. 

“The truth is that the legal framework was not designed to protect Native women,” Dr. Groat said. “Rather, it was built to fail them and further the continuation of paternalistic policies, colonization and systemic genocide.”

Ventura County’s District Attorney, Erik Nasarenko, was also present at Sunday’s event and was a speaker on the panel. In the two years since he was elected, Nasarenko has founded a Mental Health Unit within the DA office. He has placed a focus on increasing services and support for crime victims, including victims of domestic and sexual-based violence. 

Before becoming District Attorney, Nasarenko served as a senior prosecutor in Ventura County, successfully prosecuting cases of murder, kidnapping, rape and child molestation. His dedicated advocacy work for sexual assault survivors earned him Ventura County Prosecutor of the Year in 2016. 

Nasarenko noted that the Violence Against Women Act, previously mentioned by Dr. Groat, enables Ventura County to employ a full-time prosecutor who prosecutes intimate partner violence. Nationwide, VAWA funds rape clinics and resources for survivors. As Donald Trump prepares to retake the White House, his new administration, influenced by the President-elect’s recent cabinet appointments and his founding of a “Department of Government Efficiency”  has some sexual assault survivors fearing that VAWA and other acts will be under attack. 

Though Nasarenko did not make a direct connection to what Trump will mean for the future of VAWA, he did affirm its place in Ventura County.

“Federal funds matter, VAWA matters and we will fight for its continued funding and authorization,” Nasarenko said.

On the panel, Nasarenko told the story of an MMIW case in the Thousand Oaks region that, after decades, achieved a semblance of justice.

On July 15, 1980, a half-clothed woman with multiple stab wounds was found dead in an almond orchard in Bakersfield, Kern County. Investigators identified that she was possibly Native American or Hispanic, in her early 30s, but could not determine her background, name or origin.

Three days later, a second victim was found near Westlake High School, a woman who had suffered similar stab wounds and sexual assault. Her identity also remained a mystery. No developments were made in the case of the two, linked deaths for years.

The rise of the Internet eventually led to the nationwide Combined DNA Index System, a forensic evidence database with entries of known offenders, missing persons and unsolved cases. In 2008, an upload to the database led to a new discovery: the killer’s DNA found in the Kern County case led to Wilson Chouest, a man already incarcerated in the California prison system. In 2013, another upload tied Chouest to the Ventura County case. While Chouest was prosecuted, convicted and will serve in state prison for the rest of his life, his victims still went unidentified.

Eventually, the Ventura County Sheriff’s cold-case unit was able to fund a partnership with the DNA Doe Project, a specialized genealogy group devoted to identifying crime victims. Their testing of the Kern County woman matched her to the Manitoba Saskatchewan area of Canada and revealed that she was of Native Cree ancestry. Still, no family members came forward to claim her body. 

It wasn’t until the DNA Doe Project turned to social media, disclosing all uncovered details of the case, that a single detail broke through: the victim’s meticulously clean Tennis sneakers.

A family member who saw the post recalled that their aunt always wore white Keds. The DNA Doe Project took a DNA test of the niece that proved she and the victim were from the same family. Finally, after over three decades, Shirley Soosay was identified.

“I talk about [this case] because it speaks to law enforcement efforts, which are integral to making sure that these women’s voices are not forgotten and always heard,” Nasarenko said.

To this day, the victim found near Westlake High School remains unidentified. Nasarenko hopes that communities continue to see the value in cold case units. Pursuing cold cases continues the fight to prosecute offenders and bring them to justice. It also recognizes women as more than victims. 

“We don’t remember [Soosay] dying in that Kern County field, we remember her as a proud mom, as a daughter and as a sister,” Nasarenko said. “We give dignity and voice to all who are no longer with us, particularly Shirley Soosay.”

To address MMIW, the Ventura County DA office has a dedicated sexual assault cold-case unit tasked with revisiting the databases that led to Soosay’s identification. They are committed to bringing perpetrators to justice, and Thousand Oaks Congresswoman, Representative Julia Brownley, has dedicated nearly $1 million in federal money to fund its goals. They have also increased the scope of the county’s Department of Justice’s forensic testing, which is vital to solving MMIW cases.

Ventura County Family Justice Center locations are safe spaces outside of police stations and metal-detector courthouses where survivors can speak to specially trained detectives and seek support. Now, the county’s Department of Justice plans to implement MMIW framework into these spaces to recognize and in any way attempt to mend “the history of oppression, colonization, forced repatriation and assimilation [of Indigenous peoples],” Nasarenko said. 

“Which frankly,” he added, “has created undue hardship and victimization among this population.”

Dr. Jonnie Williams is a member of the Navajo Nation. A licensed clinical psychologist and trauma specialist, she has devoted her career to preventative research and systems-change strategy. She is the granddaughter of a survivor of the Tuba City boarding school in Arizona, one of the previously mentioned government institutions that imprisoned Indigenous children. 

Aside from diagnosing and treating mental health disorders, Dr. Williams is the founder and CEO of Evolve Equity, a racial justice-focused organization focused on reducing disparities and healing communities. Her work also includes empowering Indigenous women to pursue careers in public health. 

On the speaker’s panel, Dr. Williams pointed to a resource from the American Indian Law Journal that outlined five steps to addressing MMIW. The steps included reforming legislation, mandating reporting and training for law enforcement, increasing academic research and supporting Indigenous organizing and education efforts.

“In my role as a psychologist, I lead initiatives that support indigenous cultural practices and how to return to spirituality and traditional values,” Dr. Williams said. “We need to build the protective factors of Indigenous peoples to have strong social networks, to connect with community resources and to feel power within their collective, and one way to do that is through Indigenous feminism.”

Indigenous feminism proposes solutions to the MMIW crisis that center and uplift women, restoring their pre-colonization positions as sacred, guiding forces in the community.

“We’re going back to the matriarchal traditions of women as knowledge keepers, having a connection to the land and the spirit and building the resilience of Native women as leaders, rather than those that are victimized,” Dr. Williams said. “Indigenous feminism could be a way and strategy forward, but it necessitates these community-level shifts of, where do we hold value?”

Beyond a theory of intersectionality, more than a proposed solution for change, Dr. Williams actualized the principles of Indigenous feminism through her work.

“One of the things I do as a trauma psychologist is I help Indigenous peoples connect to their stories, their beliefs and traditional ways of life by supporting youth to learn and feel worthy of being teachers in their communities, so teaching leadership from a young age,” Dr. Williams said.

Dr. Williams then shared research through her presentation from Nativehope.org that proves a link between cultural reconnection and the implementation of traditional Indigenous values and reducing domestic violence.

“What is community connection? It’s watching out for one another,” Dr. Williams said. “It’s helping people access help. It’s helping people feel more independence and control over [their] life and reducing dependency on others.”

To close her panel presentation, Dr. Williams provided attendees with an Indigenous Ally Toolkit that outlines ways non-Natives can combat the MMIW crisis and the systemic obstacles Indigenous communities face. From the beginning, the Toolkit distinguishes the roles non-Native people can take on in the cause—allies, accomplices and co-resistors—and challenges readers to embody them.

“How can you lend your privilege to help support Indigenous women and girls grow in their power?” Dr. Williams addressed the panel attendees. “What can we do as a society to bolster indigenous economic self-determination? Again, that’s another pretty hard question, but one that is worth considering in terms of how we can create systems-level change for Indigenous communities to grow in their prosperity and determination.”