Litigation: filing violations of tribal code in tribal court, including fishing violations, exclusions, environmental violations etc. Additionally, we are working towards asserting criminal jurisdiction to increase tribal sovereignty. Eventually, we hope to have a criminal code that we will prosecute in tribal court, in addition to prosecuting domestic violence cases against both Indians and non-Indians pursuant to the federal Violence Against Women's Act.

 

Investigation: we hired the first dedicated MMIP Investigator in the state of California to investigate cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons. California has the 5th highest number of MMIP cases in the country, and the largest concentration of those cases is in our region of Northern California.

 

Policy Advocacy: we are approaching the crisis of MMIP on many fronts, including identifying opportunities for change within policy and legislation that create the conditions that allow the MMIP crisis to exist. Some examples of policies we are advocating for are parity for tribal police officers so they are on equal footing with state police officers, tribal notification for when Indigenous foster children go missing from case, housing for domestic violence victims, and funding to address the MMIP crisis.