Trump Signs Executive Order to Probe Unsolved Cases of Missing Native Americans
Worst. Racist. Ever.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order that directs the government to begin addressing the many unsolved cases of murdered and missing Native American women and children.
A 2008 study found women in some tribal communities are 10 times more likely to be murdered than the average American.
The National Crime Information Center said there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indians and Alaska Native women and girls in 2016 but only 116 of the cases were logged in the federal missing persons database.
The executive order, called Operation Lady Justice, establishes a task force to combat the issue.
Native American leaders and Attorney General William Barr gathered around Trump in the Oval Office for the signing session.
Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, said in a statement after the executive order was signed that it was an “important first step.”
“While there is so much that needs to be done to stop the violence perpetrated on Native women and girls, I appreciate the Administration for taking an important first step in establishing this Task Force,” Holsey said.
The order created an interagency task force which will be led by the Department of Justice and Department of the Interior.
Barr announced the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Initiative during a visit with tribal leaders and law enforcement officials on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. The initiative will invest $1.5 million in hiring specialized coordinators in the offices of 11 U.S. attorneys who will be responsible for coming up with protocols for a more coordinated response to violence against indigenous people.
Contrast the reaction to the tribal leaders with those deriding Trump for signing a proclamation earlier this month honoring the nation’s founders.
President Donald Trump has continued with the tradition established by the late George H.W. Bush in 1990 to declare November national Native American Heritage Month. But a second proclamation he issued simultaneously at the end of October also declares November national American History and Founders Month — and that has sparked controversy.
Soon after the proclamations were posted online on Halloween, some critics began expressing outrage on social media. Some incorrectly claimed the president had replaced the proclamation honoring Native Americans altogether with a new one celebrating the Founding Fathers.
The second proclamation “celebrates the vibrant American spirit that drives our Nation to remarkable heights,” from “overthrowing tyrannical rule” and “liberating Europe from Nazi control” to “protecting precious religious liberties, securing our Nation’s borders” and “placing the first-ever man on the moon 50 years ago.”
Let me clarify: Trump subverts and undermines the sole purpose of #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth by instead celebrating “The Founders” — white men who in the Declaration of Independence explicitly referred to Natives as “merciless Indian savages.” https://t.co/WXOOjRVLUB
— Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) November 5, 2019
Trump continues to embarrass his critics while taking care of our country . . . all while showing why his is the worst racist ever.
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“Trump continues to embarrass his critics while taking care of our country . . . all while showing why his is the worst racist ever.”
Ok, are the correct words in that sentence ‘he is’? Because his makes no sense. And as a summation sentence it doesn’t fit the rest of the article either. I’ll take just making sense of the final sentence though if the author would care to clarify.
Sarcasm
Maybe this is what you need.
Apostrophe society…
Agree..poorly written. Ms. Eastman is not a Trump supporter, but even so, this is a most divisive closing statement even for her. Not to her usual caliber of what we usually get here at L.I.
I knew this was a problem in the Dakotas, I never dreamed the Mohicans would share it.
“white men who in the Declaration of Independence explicitly referred to Natives as “merciless Indian savages.” ”
maybe you should read some histories…. there was a reason for their beliefs. The French-Indian War was still a living memory, and yes, the natives were pretty merciless, and their savagery was quite unknown to the European colonists, who held women and children sacrosanct in war, among other things.
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
-Declaration of Independence
white men who in the Declaration of Independence explicitly referred to Natives as “merciless Indian savages.”
In 1776, they were, and not by accident. Britain whipped up the Indians of the Ohio Valley (a much bigger area than the modern state of Ohio) to massacre and terrorize the American settlers and drive them back east. This would reduce the fledgling United States to a thin veneer on the coastline, crippling it economically and leaving it more vulnerable to Britain’s most effective military arm, the Royal Navy. So the Indians set to enthusiastically, burning towns and throwing their bound captives into the flames (except children—they chopped the arms and legs off those; I suppose one has to be an Indian to understand why that was such a thrill). Britain seemed embarrassed by the whole thing and didn’t talk much about it, but we know it was official because Lord Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, spoke of it twice in Parliament. Of course the scheme backfired horribly; refugees streamed back east over the Appalachians, and in a matter of months nearly everyone in the country had heard firsthand accounts of the massacres. It took a few months to get organized, but the colonists finally began to push back, and push back hard, in 1777.
Unfortunately for the Indians, I’ve been unable to find any record that they were represented at the Treaty of Paris; so Britain, Spain, France, and the Netherlands made the United States official in 1874, and the Indians were left out in the cold. The endemic warfare between the Indians and the new Americans didn’t finally stop until Indian raids and atrocities fizzled out for good just before World War 1.
Britain did make a last attempt to annoy the new country with Indians, proposing a state to the west—Indiana—which would keep the US hemmed in on the coastline. However, due to brilliant diplomatic work by Adams, John Jay, and—most of all—Franklin, George Rogers Clark’s wintertime capture of Vincennes was turned into a cession by the European powers of everything out to the Louisiana Territory.
Not that atrocities were new in 1776, but Britain made them official. The first Indian attack which I recall was the Jamestown massacre in 1622. About a third of the colonists died before they even knew anyone was mad at them. Though once they started fighting back, that one didn’t go well for the Indians, either.
We can afford to be sentimental about Indians because it’s been a while since they’ve been a menace to civilization.
1874 > 1784. D’oh!
I have no problem with the phrase “merciless Indian savages”.
The atrocities in the colonial era were matched by the barbarism of Comanche marauders during the frontier era who routinely abducted, raped, mutilated and murdered settlers with no remorse.
The survivors accounts are stuff of nightmares.
The Comanches also enslaved and sold members of other tribes to the Spaniards. The idea that native Indians are a homogeneous people with a universally pacifist culture is an invention of modern identitarians and political opportunists.
“”The idea that native Indians are a homogeneous people with a universally pacifist culture is an invention of modern identitarians and political opportunists.””
True. Indian wars between tribes were unceasing. One of the underlying reasons for tribes allying with the British or French was the long enduring war between the Iroquois and Hurons.
“Not that atrocities were new in 1776, but Britain made them official.”
The French weren’t above inciting the Indians well before that.
Donald Trump is the wort person to ever exist. Worse than Hitler! Imagine? He insulted the Navajo code talkers by, uh, making a joke about Elizabeth Warren, who we all know is Cherokee.
Even if the Cherokee don’t agree. And also the Navajo didn’t it take it as an insult.
And of course I and just about every swinging d&&* has more Indian blood than the 1/1024 percent native American Warren (and I dispute even that claim because I have a geneticist in my hip pocket who will attest someone could have gotten the same genetic markers if one of their ancestors got raped by a Mongol one thousand years ago), which makes her the whitest person in America. Certainly the whitest person to contribute to the recipe book, “Pow Wow Chow.”
She’s whiter than me. And I’ve ever tried to force my way onto the Cherokee.
TS, so may i say that torturing enemies has been a long standing action by those who understand that war is always about reducing the population of your enemy. The sicker & more horrific the better, as that creates fear & dread. Not an apologist for either but Native Americans lived brutal lives, due in part to when & where they existed. I also think, after reading History that brutal people are used by the military to accomplish particular goals. Some British leaders became much better at this, viz the Irish Potato Famine.
Was the Clark raid in Vincennes made during a ball? My son thought that was especially hilarious.
Re. Jamestown, i recently have been researching the Catholic Spanish missions. They are a fascinating & heartbreaking story from the Jamestown area but predate the English colony.
“The sicker & more horrific the better, as that creates fear & dread.”
It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it. – R.E.Lee
“I also think, after reading History that brutal people are used by the military to accomplish particular goals.”
In some circles, they were known as Berserkers. Every captain wanted at least one on board. They enjoyed being brutal.
Indian reservations are lawless – a lot of killings go down.
I’m guessing just from my own experience that ten times greater murder rate is accurate.
It’s awful although getting better. I worked law enforcement in the same res my grandfather and my son did.
Watch “Wind River” on Amazon it Netflix (can’t remember which). The movie, though fictional, addresses this issue of murder on Reservations, and is a legit GOOD movie. No spoilers here, but there is one of the most harrowing and realistic feeling gun battles I have ever seen on film.
I never knew the violent crime was so bad comparatively to the rest of the country. This move by Trump is a much needed first step.
The initiative will invest $1.5 million in hiring specialized coordinators in the offices of 11 U.S. attorneys who will be responsible for coming up with protocols for a more coordinated response to violence against indigenous people.
Aside from sounding like yet another “makework” project for “specialized coordinators” (i.e., Indians), I don’t see what this can possibly do. US attorneys have nothing to do with law enforcement on reservations. Federal police can’t even pursue fugitive criminals into a reservation without stopping for negotiations with the tribal elders. By treaty, the reservations are pretty much on their own. Washington tends to give them pots of money—just like foreign aid—but doesn’t control law enforcement. The feds can’t even control smuggling through reservations which adjoin the borders.
Different jurisdictions have different procedure. Some tribes have all their criminal Justice handled by the feds some prosecute jointly for certain crimes and some only have some of their law enforcement handled by the feds. It’s a complex web of fed, state and tribal law.
I was an investigator for tribes as well as the state and the Department of Interior at the same time.
Their status as pseudo-sovereign nations also exempts them from many state taxes and regulations. A reason why the tribes are not particularly motivated to renegotiate their century-old treaties.
The current horrible situation for too many Indian tribes and people is a direct result of the Federal government running the Reservations like a feudal monarchy. Just like East Berlin was Russian payback for what the Germans did to Russia in WW II the reservation system is payback for the Indian wars. Haven’t we done enough now?