Memorial to codify MMIWR task force passes first committee

SANTA FE — As Ahtza D. Chavez listened to the beating drums and songs that filled the Rotunda on Friday morning, as she looked around at the diversity of the people dressed up, she found herself centered and happy — emotions that don’t always come easily during a bustling, legislative session.

It was the mark of American Indian Day at the Capitol on Friday.

“It is so beautiful,” said Chavez, executive director of Indigenous-led organization Naeva.

A morning of music, dancing and speeches wasn’t the only sign of a strong Indigenous presence at the Legislature.

While celebrations were ongoing downstairs, a memorial that would get the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives task force going again passed its first legislative committee upstairs, quickly and unanimously.

The task force is an effort to address the extremely high rates of violence Native women face and the lack of information and data around the epidemic.

State-created task forces have been looking into the issue since 2019, on and off, dependent on legislation and executive orders to keep work going. An MMIWR task force formally created by a 2021 executive order from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham eventually just dissolved after the governor didn’t renew her order upon expiration in June 2022.

Lujan Grisham late in 2023 announced the creation of a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Advisory Council. It drew criticism from tribal and community members, and Chavez said the council doesn’t have the teeth and power a task force has.

She said it was great to see lawmakers introduce Senate Joint Memorial 2 and attempt to bring back the actual MMIWR task force again.

“It’s what our communities need, and it’s the least thing we can do to protect our women,” she said.

The memorial calls on the Attorney General’s Office to convene a MMIWR task force and lays out its framework, a workaround to needing the governor to repeatedly renew orders to keep work going.

It took less than a minute for the Senate Rules Committee on Friday to pass the joint memorial. Staff didn’t even have time to finish passing out copies of the memorial before the committee passed the legislation.

Committee Chair Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, let the Rules meeting run a little longer than usual to make it to the memorial on Friday.

Bill sponsors Sens. Shannon Pinto, D-Tohatchi, and Linda López, D-Albuquerque, in a joint statement to the Journal, thanked the Senate Rules Committee for the support and moving Senate Joint Memorial 2 forward.

“It’s important for the MMIWR task force to continue its work in the Attorney General’s Office,” they said.

Chavez said this task force rightly belongs under the Attorney General’s Office, “where you have the police, you have the infrastructure to actually respond to any sort of incident, to really help the families.”

She said Pinto and López listened to “the cries of our community” and are pushing for a change.

The memorial heads to the Senate Indian, Rural and Cultural Affairs Committee next. If passed, the memorial will go into effect 90 days after the session, which is May 15.