While Indigenous people make up just three percent of Wyoming’s population, they continue to be the victims of homicides and go missing at disproportionately higher rates than white residents. New data shows that homicide rates have slightly decreased since 2019, but homicide rates for Native people are still five times higher than they are for white people in the state.
That’s according to an updated “Indigenous Victims of Homicide and Missing Persons in Wyoming” report from the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Task Force. The task force was formed in 2019 and put out their first statewide report in 2021, in response to grassroots activists pushing for more attention to be paid to the long-ongoing and long-overlooked issue.
That initial report looked at two decades of homicide data and one decade of missing-persons data to create a baseline understanding of the crisis. Since then, the task force has continued to track that data annually and is now looking at year-to-year changes over a rolling five year average.
One-hundred-and-seventy-seven missing cases in Wyoming were entered by law enforcement into the National Crime Information Center last year, representing one-hundred-and-ten individual people.
Dr. Emily Grant is a senior research scientist at the University of Wyoming’s Survey and Analysis Center and works as a lead researcher to provide data support to the state’s MMIP task force. She said that data pushes against a narrative that most cases are linked to repeat runaways.
“Seventy-six percent of cases were reported one time and only fourteen percent of the total was reported three or more times in that year. The vast majority are only reported one time,” she said.
Only eleven of those cases are still unresolved. However, Dr. Grant said the data doesn’t provide context into how they were resolved.
“We don't know the circumstances of how they are closed, if they are found safe and well or if they have passed. We don't have the information other than that they are no longer considered missing,” she said.
While missing juvenile cases must be entered into the system, there isn’t a federal requirement for adults to be entered. But, Grant said the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation has assured the task force that law enforcement agencies are entering adult cases into the system.
The report also found that, on average, Indigenous people are missing for a longer period of time than white people. However, more than half of missing cases involving Indigenous persons were closed within a week in 2023. Dr. Grant said that’s encouraging.
“The longer that someone is missing, the more vulnerable they are to becoming victims of crime or victimized in many ways,” she said.
Dr. Grant recognizes that this new data-driven report only tells part of a continually evolving story. The initial 2021 report and a 2023 update have both included more qualitative recommendations and insight from family members, survivors, and community members. In the 2023 update, stakeholders reflected on challenges like distrust in law enforcement and lack of resources for Indigenous peoples.
One community member quoted in the 2023 report reflected on the need for culturally informed solutions and educational efforts, saying “Indigenous people need Indigenous solutions.”
Dr. Grant said the task force wants to continue to seek out perspectives and reflections from those closest to the issue as they continue to track the crisis.
“What does this mean for the community? What changes are they seeing? Does it feel different now, when we're looking at 2023 compared to 2019?” she said. “There's not a quick overnight fix and it's going to require so many sectors of the community to come together and recognize that this is an issue and be committed to making the changes,” she said.
In that vein, the state MMIP task force meetings are open to all. Dr. Grant said she hopes the new data can help inform decisions made in the state legislature and also help tribal governments, community members and grassroots efforts.
“Having this data available is very important for policy making, for deciding what kind of programs you want to have, and for obtaining grant funding that’s very hard to come by, especially in Native communities. We hope the numbers are used in many ways,” she said.
According to the state task force’s most recent agenda from an online meeting in February, the group will gather again in-person on May 15th. The location is yet to be decided.
