Savanna's Act


The Savanna's Act or #MMIW Act reforms law enforcement and justice protocols appropriate to address missing and murdered Native women, and for other purposes. An initial version of the bill passed the Senate on December 6, 2018. It was held by Bob Goodlatte on December 10, 2018.
The bill, after the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown reintroduced in 2019 as S.227, was nicknamed after Fargo, North Dakota resident Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was brutally murdered in August 2017 as an example of the horrific statistics regarding abuse and homicide of Native American women. Related bills on the state level are Hanna's Act in Montana, a bill named after Hanna Harris of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Tribe in Montana, who was 21 years old when she went missing on July 4, 2013.

Support and opposition

Initially just a method to improve data collection on missing and murdered Indigenous women to address that crisis for law enforcement bodies on both reservations and non-reservation US territories, modifications to give tribal law enforcement access to federal databases seems to expose a lack of trust on both sides. To help this act along, the Not Invisible Act has been introduced to the House on the initiative of Deb Haaland and Norma Torres and to the Senate by Catherine Cortez Masto on April 2, 2019 to increase intergovernmental coordination to identify and combat violent crime within Indian lands and of Indians.