Congressman Mike Simpson Addresses the Crisis of 6000 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Congressman Mike Simpson became aware of the alarming number—about 6,000 annually—of missing and murdered Indigenous women and children in the U.S. after watching a PBS special. Shocked by the scale of the crisis, he organized a congressional hearing to learn more. He highlighted jurisdictional confusion between tribal, state, and federal authorities, lack of resources on reservations, and systemic neglect as major obstacles. Simpson emphasized the need for stronger cooperation, more law enforcement support, and action from federal agencies like the FBI to address the issue seriously.

Transcript:

Sam Stone: He is a busy, busy man. Mike Simpson, welcome back to the program. Good to be with you.

Chuck Warren: So, Congressman, you were watching a PBS special and you found out that there's all these missing and murder indigenous women and children. And the number that came out, 6,000. First question is, were your constituents mad you were watching PBS?

But more importantly, what have you found out about that now that you've dug into that?

Mike Simpson: Well, you know, you talk about watching PBS in Idaho. We actually like PBS and they have some really good programs, but I was sitting down watching this report and they had this story on, uh, with some women who had, uh, from,

from the tribes that have been involved in this. And they started talking that there are 6,000 murdered and missing indigenous women in this country every year. And I was stunned. I mean, I've been on this committee forever and I had never heard that. And, uh, If there were 6,000 people, I mean, this is twice as many people that go missing and murdered on Indian reservations and so forth, indigenous people. That's twice as many as died in 9-11. And this happens every year. it is obviously a real problem. So we put together a hearing and called in some of these women to tell their story. Some of them,

one of the most fascinating ones is this woman told her story about how she was a young girl and she was kidnapped and she was held in a house or a cabin or whatever on the reservation. And she was held there for like six months. She was... abused and raped and everything else.

And then they disposed of her by dropping her off the reservation. And then the challenge comes up that we find out is who has jurisdiction over that? Is that the county? Is that the tribe? She couldn't identify the house that she was kept at. And so anyway, this went along.

She knows who the person is that held her. And in fact, she's now on their tribal council. And one of her constituents is the guy that held her. This is crazy. And 90% of it is due to the fact that, A, oh, they're just Indians. What the heck?

We don't take them as seriously as we do any other segment of society. We're taking it seriously. And we're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to get the FBI. I noticed that Pam Bondi just surged. a whole bunch of FBI agents to reservations to address this issue and see what needs to be done.

It's going to be a big task, but it's going to cost us some money and stuff. And the problem is on reservations, they don't have the police force to do some of these things. Some of these reservations are huge. They'll be the size of the state of Connecticut and have two officers on call at any one time.

And if they get a domestic violence call, all of a sudden, it might be an hour, hour and a half, two hours before an officer can get there. And by then, the issue's all over. So we've got to do more there in helping our indigenous population address this problem, and we're going to do it.

Sam Stone: Can I follow up one quick question? So you said Pam Bondi's putting focus on that. One of the things I've been wondering about in terms of the Trump administration, especially with organizations like the FBI, CIA, also others, are they de-bureaucratizing it and getting those agents back into the field where they can actually do their jobs?

Is that part of how they're achieving that surge?

Mike Simpson: Absolutely. That's what they're doing. And the other thing is, as I mentioned, we got to solve some of this jurisdictional issue. You know, for years it was you had tribal law enforcement and you didn't have the agreements between counties and the state,

MOUs of cross jurisdiction and that kind of stuff. That's changing. They're starting to realize that police officers, the tribal police officers go through the same training that every other police officer does. And they're starting to recognize each other and stuff. But the jurisdictional issue is enormous and it's just complicated.

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