Lawmakers want attorney general to create new task force on missing and murdered Indigenous people KUNM By Bella Davis
KUNM | By Bella Davis, New Mexico In Depth
Published January 25, 2024 at 7:06 PM MST
Indigenous families with loved ones who have gone missing or been murdered protest outside Albuquerque City Hall on July 21, 2023.
Bella Davis
/New Mexico In Depth
Indigenous families with loved ones who have gone missing or been murdered protest outside Albuquerque City Hall on July 21, 2023.
This story was first published by New Mexico In Depth.
Five New Mexico lawmakers want the state attorney general to establish a task force focused on missing and murdered Indigenous people.
They’ve made the request via Senate Joint Memorial 2, which they introduced this week. The memorial puts on display the disagreement some lawmakers have with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s quiet shuttering last year of a task force dedicated to finding solutions to what’s been identified as a national crisis. Indigenous women in the state, according to the memorial, have the highest homicide rate among all ethnic groups.
Because this year’s 30-day session is reserved for putting together the state budget in addition to whatever priorities the governor pinpoints, the lawmakers were limited to proposing a memorial, which is not legally binding.
Task force members decried the governor’s disbanding of their group last year, telling New Mexico In Depth in October their work was just beginning. The decision “left questions unanswered,” the memorial reads.
The Indian Affairs Department, which housed the group, held the final meeting last May, just a few months after several members spoke out against Lujan Grisham’s appointment of James Mountain to lead the agency.
More:
https://www.kunm.org/local-news/2024-01-25/lawmakers-want-attorney-general-to-create-new-task-force-on-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-people