Signs to commemorate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are placed outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol on May 05, 2022 in Madison, Wisconsin. According to the Washington State Patrol, figures show that 126 Indigenous people are unaccounted for in the state. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, data collected by researchers from 71 cities across 29 states shows 506 cases of missing and murdered native women and girls in the U.S. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force established by the Wisconsin Department of Justice reviewed more than 40 recommendations at its Sept. 19 meeting, including one to “institute greater accountability measures for law enforcement,” urging the Legislature to pass state laws mandating stronger oversight of law enforcement investigations.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said during the meeting that he was not “comfortable” with the recommendation because it didn’t have a specific focus and it read as though it was critical of law enforcement. He suggested exploring how “agencies can more effectively collaborate and respond to cases” involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Pushing back, task force member Andrea Lemke-Rochon offered an example of what she said was the lack of accountability concerning a case involving her cousin, Rae Elaine Tourtillott, who was murdered on the Menominee reservation in the 1980s, leaving behind a 7-week-old baby. The family, she said, had been kept in the dark about the subsequent investigation.

“I think the issue is we’re just really trying to get at the fact that the ball gets dropped a lot,” she said. “You know, there’s a box of evidence, supposedly from my cousin’s murder. Nobody knows where it is, who tested it, who worked on it, so I feel strongly about the fact that we need to have some kind of accountability measures.”

She encouraged a meeting between law enforcement and family members of victims to discuss their experiences and out of those discussions create specific recommendations. Kaul asked if the concern was “communication” or “the details of how the investigation is conducted.”

“Both,” responded Lemke-Rochon, adding she didn’t understand why Kaul was uncomfortable with a broad recommendation asking for more accountability for law enforcement, with the details to be worked out later. 

“Right now, it reads to me as sort of critical of law enforcement, but without providing specifics,” said Kaul, who added, “If we’re going to have a sort of criticism, I think it’s helpful to have specifics about how to address it.”
He noted many victims’ families often feel frustrated that they are not getting information.

“It’s not just getting the information,” responded Lemke-Rochon. “It’s really doing the investigation and being taken seriously when something’s happening. So it’s so much bigger than that. I can appreciate what you said that this sounds critical of law enforcement and I think it is, because so often law enforcement lets us down. And, no disrespect to all of you hard working folks in DOJ, I think that’s just a reality that sometimes impacts Indigenous peoples and other people of color. And so I would like to word this in a way that it doesn’t sound like such a strong finger point, and yet it’s an issue.”

Brooke Johnson, the Justice Department’s crime victim services and MMIW/R task force coordinator, suggested an “assessment of the barriers as far as why the ball is being dropped.” 

“If a case isn’t solved or doesn’t result in charges, as a family member it’s incredibly painful, and particularly when you’re talking about a missing person who hasn’t been found,” said Kaul, “and you know, I think in a perfect world there would be always great communication, and people would be kept informed on exactly what’s happening, and people would be consulted. But you know, in reality, that probably doesn’t always happen as well as we would like, for perfectly legitimate reasons, right? People have resource constraints. You know, they’ve got a lot of cases going on, and to an extent that there are barriers to that kind of communication.” 

Renee Gralewicz, a Brothertown Indian Nation member, weighed in. “But I keep going back to the example of Andrea’s relative. It’s been a cold case for decades,” she said. “I mean, and then they’re told you can’t have any information because it’s an ongoing case. But how does the family even know it’s still an ongoing case when the remains have been found?”

She added, “That’s part of my concern about not having more accountability is when can the case be called a cold case? When can the law enforcement share with the family what they have, you know? Because, again, this is probably not the forum to go into it, because it is fairly complicated, but we have cold cases that are 30, 40, 50 years old, and their families are not informed of anything, because oftentimes they’re told it’s an ongoing investigation.”

Myrna Warrington, a Menominee Indian Tribe councilwoman, said her uncle, Paddlefish, a tribal police officer, helped create a multi-jurisdictional task force that met yearly with agencies all over the state and talked about issues and collaborated on goals.

“So it just seems like something that we should be doing, having multi-jurisdictional meetings to see how things are going. What can we do to improve these situations?” said Warrington.

Kaul said the group Warrington referred to still exists and is called the Native American Drug and Gang Initiative. The group won a national award in 2016 from Harvard University’s Project on American Indian Economic Development for “excellence in tribal governance.” 

Seeking a tribal liaison

Kaul reported to the task force that he is seeking a tribal liaison position at the Department of Justice to work on cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.

“We think there’s a lot of benefit to having a liaison within each tribe and then having somebody at the DOJ who would work with those folks,” Kaul said. He noted the DOJ’s request was not on the behalf of the task force. 

The DOJ budget request, totaling about $3.6 million, includes one DOJ tribal liaison/coordinator position and funding for individual liaison positions spread out among each of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes.

Christopher McKinny, the DOJ’s director of government affairs, told the task force that the “basic premise” of the DOJ’s request was to “decentralize the process as much as possible with state government and really provide resources for tribal governments.”

He said tribal representatives have told the DOJ that it is more important to have family liaisons available “as opposed to having those resources in Madison at the Department of Justice.”

Gov. Tony Evers’ 2023-25 budget request included $7.4 million for a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIW/R) office within the DOJ to provide training and services to crime victims and witnesses. That request didn’t make it through the Republican-controlled Legislature. 

If it had passed, it would have made Wisconsin only the second state with such an office. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation establishing the first such office in in 2021.

Task Force request

Justine Rufus, the task force co-chair, said task force members needed to organize and gain public support for additional funding through  the governor’s budget request.

“I think it is very important for us to share this publicly; get support rallied in our communities for these asks because we aren’t going to get the dollars if we’re not doing that type of work,” she said.

Eugenia Hedlund of Wisconsin Judicare Legal Aid said the Task Force had been looking at replicating the office that Minnesota created.

“The folks (legislators) who are on there (the budget committee) are good people,” said Kaul. It’s important for the task force to build relationships, he added, “and not be discouraged even though I understand that the process is frustrating.”

Rufus said the Task Force members needed to have “face-to-face” conversations with legislators.

Working collaboratively

Hedlund also suggested the task force work with other groups concerned with  “intertwined” issues, such as human trafficking.

Kaul agreed that the soon-to-be-created  Human Trafficking Council and  the existing Human Trafficking Task Force could be good partners in the effort to address missing Indigenous people. 

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