The United States has yet to deal adequately with the crisis of the vast numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in our country.

According to a 2016 study funded by the National Institute of Justice, more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence during their lifetimes, 84.3% of that population. Within this group, 56.1% have suffered from sexual violence and 55.5% have experienced physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Indigenous women are 1.2 times as likely as non-Hispanic white women to have suffered from violence. The Urban Indian Health Institute found that more than 5,700 Indigenous women and girls went missing in 2016 alone.

Last year Congress passed the Not Invisible Act, which is tasked with enhancing coordination within the government to identify and fight violent crime against Native Americans. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has formed a Missing & Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services to provide direction on interagency and cross-departmental work related to missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Here are practices and policies that need to be carried out:

Enhance information sharing and crime database access among federal, tribal, state and local law enforcement.

Strengthen standards for tracking and for working across jurisdictions to help find missing Indigenous persons.

Improve websites for the reporting of missing Indigenous persons.

Create more Indigenous-based domestic violence shelters that provide prompt, culturally appropriate support to victims.

Establish education campaigns for non-Native communities geared toward heightening awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Create uniform standards for the filing of police reports for missing persons to allow victims’ families better access to state and federal compensation funds.

Provide additional accreditation for tribal police and local, state and federal law enforcement agencies that regularly work cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Deron Marquez is the co-founder of the Tribal Administration Program at Claremont Graduate University. Keely Marquez is a University of Arizona undergraduate researcher and policy analyst working on issues related to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Ted Gover is director of the Tribal Administration Program at Claremont Graduate University.