Oklahoma Watch: Ida's Law offers promise for Indigenous people with some limitations - Tulsa World

The day she realized her daughter was missing, Ida Beard’s mother went to the police.

It isn’t a crime for someone to leave town if they want to, officers said. Maybe she’ll come back, she was told.

She never did.

According to family members, they reported her missing in late June of 2015, but the El Reno Police did not open an investigation and start searching for Beard, a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, until two weeks later. According to El Reno Police, her case was opened on July 15. During that two-week window, family members started asking friends and neighbors if they had seen Beard.

A new law that goes into effect this week aims to give the state’s Native American families like Beard’s a more coordinated pursuit of justice.

Ida’s Law, named for the mother of four who was 29 years old when she went missing, prompted changes within the state’s top law enforcement agency. An agent now tracks and investigates cases of missing and murdered Indigenous Oklahomans. A victim advocate now supports their families.

But progress will be slow due to a lack of funding.

And because crimes against Native Americans often go unreported, the number of cases involving Indigenous Oklahoma is unknown. Recent estimates show that at least 220 Native American Oklahomans are missing.

How Ida’s Law came to be

Senate Bill 172 was signed into law in April to help knock down some of the hurdles Native families face when their loved ones are murdered or go missing. The law requires the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to secure federal funding to establish an office of liaison and create a database to keep up with these cases.

Families are uncertain whether to report these cases to local police, tribal law enforcement or federal authorities. Now, families can report directly to the state’s Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons.

Ida Beard’s cousin LaRenda Morgan, who is also the Governmental Affairs Officer for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, worked with State Rep. Mickey Dollens, D-Oklahoma City, and State Sen. Paul Rosino, R-Oklahoma City, on the legislation.

In 2018, Morgan ran against Dollens for a seat in the House of Representatives. Morgan lost, but the two stayed in touch. For three years after Beard’s disappearance, Morgan shared her cousin’s missing-persons flier on social media.

Dollens asked what he could do to help after seeing one of Morgan’s posts. They spent the next two years drafting legislation.

There is no accurate count of missing and murdered Indigenous people — more specifically with women — anywhere in the country, according to a study by the Urban Indian Health Institute. For instance, the study cited 5,712 reports of missing and murdered Indigenous women as of 2016. Only 116 were reported to the Department of Justice.

Complicating factors include confusion about whose jurisdiction the missing cases fall under, a lack of trust between Indigenous families and police, and misclassification of the missing person.

The new database required by the law is designed to properly document those who go missing while the agent acting as the liaison will start investigating the cases and meeting with tribes.

Sarah Adams-Cornell is a citizen of the Choctaw nation and co-founder of Matriarch, a nonprofit in Oklahoma City and Tulsa that builds social welfare among Indigenous women and children. Prior to Ida’s Law, when someone within the Native American community went missing, it was largely up to family and community members to organize search efforts, she said. Just last year, the Matriarch team helped organize search efforts for three Indigenous girls who went missing in Oklahoma City and were eventually found.

“It should not be up to the community and family members to solely search for their loved ones,” Adams-Cornell said. “I’m hopeful that this office is going to help bridge a lot of those gaps.”

Limitations Of Ida’s Law

While Ida’s Law aims to improve coordination between tribal, state and federal agencies, it does not remove the complexity that ensues when crimes are committed against tribal members or on tribal land.

A 2020 Supreme Court decision and the governor’s contentious relationship with the tribes add to the challenges.

The impacts of McGirt v. Oklahoma on the state’s judicial system remain unclear more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state. The case determined that the state has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by or against Native Americans on tribal lands.

It’s not always clear which law enforcement agency is responsible for investigating crimes against tribal members, OSBI spokeswoman Brook Arbeitman said. That confusion can delay investigations, jeopardize evidence collection and witness interviews, and leave grieving family members without support.

“It’s so complicated, they’re almost revictimized by jurisdiction,” Arbeitman said.

The agency plans to launch an entire department dedicated to tracking and investigating these cases and supporting the families of Native American victims.

Lawmakers did not direct any state funding toward the effort, leaving the agency to rely on Oklahoma tribes and federal grants to expand support for these cases. For now, the OSBI has assigned two employees to work on the cases part-time, while also fulfilling other responsibilities.

This summer, OSBI special agent Dale Fine was assigned to serve as the tribal liaison under Ida’s Law. He is responsible for compiling a list of unsolved cases involving missing and murdered Native Americans. So far, he has compiled a few dozen cases being investigated by OSBI and local and tribal law enforcement. Beard’s case is already on the list.

Fine, a member of the Cherokee Nation who has been an OSBI agent for nine years, is contacting the investigators working those cases to offer assistance. The OSBI can provide fingerprint and DNA analysis, help log information into the missing persons database or add an extra pair of eyes to a case that’s gone cold.

Christy Pata, who has been supporting victims’ families at OSBI for seven years, now has the added responsibility of helping Native American families as Ida’s law brings attention to their cases. She provides updates about the case, connects families to support groups, provides funding for funeral costs, and accompanies families to court hearings.

“It’s a trust issue,” Pata said. “They don’t automatically believe their case is going to be looked at the same as a non-Native case.”

Pata, who often travels to rural parts of the state to support families, said she has heard prejudiced comments made about Native Americans by the people who are responsible for solving these cases.

Ida’s Law unlikely to bring Ida home

After El Reno police opened an investigation into Beard’s disappearance, only Beard’s mother and a friend, who was the last to see her, were questioned. No one else was interviewed until years later when a new detective took over the case.

El Reno’s Assistant Police Chief Maj. Kirk Dickerson said interviews related to Beard’s case were conducted on Wednesday. Dickerson joined the department in 2018, three years after Beard went missing.

“We are still actively attempting to locate Ms. Beard,” Dickerson said. “I hope we find her somewhere sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere saying ‘I just didn’t want to talk to you guys.’ Until then, we’re going to keep looking for Ida.”

Although the new detective looks at Beard’s case weekly, evidence and witness accounts have dwindled over time, along with the family’s hope of finding their loved one.

source: https://tulsaworld.com/news/state-and-regional/oklahoma-watch-idas-law-offers-promise-for-indigenous-people-with-some-limitations/article_8dade7a0-3e56-11ec-b0ca-3b420b942bd7.html

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