Congress Just Passed Two Bills That Are Intended to Protect Native Women from Violence
Last week, Congress passed the Not Invisible Act and Savanna's Act, two bills aiming to address the epidemic of violence against Native women, commonly referred to as missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Statistics show that Native American women are particularly vulnerable to violence in their lifetimes. On some reservations, for instance, Native women are murdered at a rate more than 10 times the national average. And across the board, more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetimes, whether it be sexual violence or physical violence at the hands of a partner, according to a 2016 study funded by the National Institute of Justice. Also, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists homicide as the third leading cause of death for Native women 19 years old and under.
Savanna's Act—named for Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old woman who was brutally killed and whose eight-month-old fetus was cut from her womb—was unanimously passed by the Senate in March after it was reintroduced by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski. (The bill was originally penned and introduced in 2017 by then Senator Heidi Heitkamp.) After being blocked in 2018, Savanna's Act passed the House of Representatives last Monday.
The Not Invisible Act, which was originally introduced by Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in 2019, also cleared the House that same Monday.