Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Native American Affairs

All right, we'd like to call the Select Committee on Native American affairs to order. We have Members that are having different events. So you'll see some Members pop in, pop out. But we are being recorded, and all the testimony that you're going to hear today will be recorded in the State Legislature so that we could go back and look at it.

But today's hearing is meant to hear from those on the front lines of issues of success, issues that we need to improve and to hear from the voices themselves. And this is a pretty tough issue for Indian people, when we deal with these types of issues. So what I'm going to do is take the privilege as a chair of the Select Committee of Native American affairs and open up in a traditional song. And this is Serrano Bighorn sheep song.

(song plays)

Just want to thank you in recognizing, also, those of this land, the Miwok, Nisenan people, Patwin people. Thank you. As Chairman, you could take privilege like that, see? I just want to thank everybody for being here and bringing to issue--with the press conference that we just had--about the issues that still plague California Indian people, California's first people here in the State of California. We're going to have different panels of testimony moving forward. Just an overview.

Our first panel will be an overview of California's efforts on missing and murdered indigenous persons, Feather Alert, an AB 3099 from the Attorney General's Office. Panel two will be tribal perspective on implementation of the Feather Alert. And that's where we'll hear more discussion on successes and areas that we need to address.

Panel three will be law enforcement perspective on implementation of Feather Alert, and that will be combined with tribal police and Humboldt County Sheriff, San Francisco Police Commissioner, San Diego Sheriff Kelly Martinez, and Los Angeles Police Department Commander Jay Mastick. We also will have with us, also in the room is the California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee. So we have all these issues of coming together.

And it was said that 2024 is a time of building coalition: allies to move forward, to start to address these issues that have plagued California's first people for over 170 years, since the creation of the State of California. But we're all in this room together to find solutions: how we best move forward and how we best start to bring public safety to California's first people so that loved ones that go missing can be found and brought back home safely--not being another statistic here in the State of California.

And you've heard me say it before, when I first got elected, we looked into the missing and murdered indigenous person, Native American persons issue. California was number seven of all states in the nation. Today going into 2024, we're number five--moving in the wrong direction. So it's just that we're all here today building a coalition and building that mutual respect.

So when things do happen that there's a call out to local law enforcement, then ultimately the Feather Alert triggered by the California Highway Patrol. But we also have to have different mutual respect and implementation meetings with the tribal community itself and the tribal police. And a lot of this is, I believe, centered around Public Law 280 and that jurisdictional divide that still separates many.

With that, we want to get started on our first panel, and I will invite up to the dais here, the area, we're going to have first panel: overview of California efforts on missing and murdered indigenous persons, Feather Alert and AB 3099. We have the California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee and office of the Attorney General, California Department of Justice Director Merri Lopez-Keifer.

Commissioner.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning. Thanks for starting off the meeting that way. I appreciate that. It's an honor for me to be here. My name is Sean Duryee. I'm the Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol. I've been in this role for--well, February 3 will mark one year. So coming up on one year. And before I tackle the topics that I was invited to speak on directly, let me just say that to you and everybody in the room, that this is a priority for us.

We want to be part of the solution. The California Highway Patrol as a statewide coordinator, doesn't want to be seen as a roadblock or prohibition on these alerts, but we want to be seen as part of the team. And for us, the bottom line is that we're doing everything we can to make people aware of missing persons and those at risk, and that as a law enforcement agency, we're doing everything we can and using all the resources available to us to safely find and locate these missing people. As you know, sir, the bill went into effect January 1 of 2023.

So we're just over a year of the Feather Alert, and I was asked to talk about just how the highway patrol has done with implementation. Report back on some of the training that we've done, the outreach, and maybe some of the feedback that we received so far. So the CHP's role in this at the statewide coordinator is we issue the alert.

We work hand in hand with the local jurisdictions, whether it's a municipality, a sheriff's office, law enforcement agency, and we determine together whether the set criteria, the criteria set by the Legislature has been met. And we work hand in hand with that law enforcement agency, and we go through the criteria step by step. And at that point, a decision is made on whether or not the criteria has been met and whether or not a Feather Alert is issued.

I can tell you, since the law was enacted in 2023, we've received five requests for Feather Alerts in California. They went through that collaborative process, and of those five, two Feather Alerts were issued. I'm happy to report that both of the activations resulted in the recovery of the missing persons. I think a point of discussion today will be the ones that were not issued.

And during that process, between the local law enforcement agency and the personnel, the CHP, the decision was made that the criteria was not met. That doesn't mean that we don't proactively take steps to help locate people. Just the criteria for the actual Feather Alert was not issued. Of those three, all three were located. Unfortunately, one of them was located deceased of apparent suicide. The other two were located through more traditional law enforcement means and I think means of the community, of getting the word out.

I was talking with some tribal leadership before this, and they had indicated they use their own social media to get the word out. And so I think, of the three, like I said, one was found deceased of suicide. The other two were located. How the CHP works, how we do it on our end, we have the emergency notification tactical alert center. We call it ENTAC. It's a 24/7 operation. It's housed right here in Sacramento at our CHP headquarters. I would open it up to anybody interested.

We're happy to give you a tour of the facility and kind of educate you further on how it works. But these men and women are educated on the alerts that we facilitate in California as a statewide coordinator, and they're there, ready and willing to receive these requests from local law enforcement agencies and issue the alerts when appropriate. ENTAC conducts a full analysis and intake involving each non-activated request that does not meet the alert criteria.

And when a request does not meet the criteria for activation, the CHP still offers some investigative assistance and support to the investigating law enforcement agency in hopes of recovering the missing or at-risk person. Many may not know, or maybe they do know, that currently we have seven different alerts in California. Probably the best or the most known or well known is the Amber Alert. It's been in effect since 2002. By way of perspective, that first year we received 17 requests for Amber Alert activations.

16 of those 17 requests met the criteria and were issued. This year, in 2023, the year we're discussing, we received six requests for Amber Alerts and six were issued. I provided, or my staff prepared and provided, a chart that I hope you received and the other Members of the Committee will be provided. But it shows the different alerts that we activated and requests that we received in 2023. Hopefully will serve as a comparison.

In addition to Amber Alert, we have the Blue Alert, we have the Silver Alert, we have, of course, the Feather Alert, we have the recently enacted Ebony Alert, an alert for endangered missing advisories, and we also have the Yellow Alert. For me, the different alerts highlight this strategy and this relationship between government and public sector, between law enforcement and communities.

It leverages traditional media, it leverages social media platforms and other partners to effectively provide the public with real, actionable item that allows these alerts to be successful. I think that's a key component of the success of these alerts, is we're putting out information that will help the public recognize and identify the whereabouts of these at-risk personnel. In regards to training, I was asked to talk about specifically training. The California Penal Code mandates post-training on missing persons for all law enforcement officers and dispatchers.

By way of processes, every law enforcement officer has provided what we call in the Highway Patrol, and I don't know what other law enforcement agents call it, but a Ready Ref, it's a quick reference guide that's carried with them while they're on patrol. And in that Ready Ref, which we produce, it includes missing persons alerts and step by step processes. It's taken by beat officers to facilitate those alerts. We encourage investigating agencies to utilize us as a statewide coordinator to help provide training.

We're required by law to provide training for Amber Alerts, but when we do provide that training, we provide training not only on Amber Alerts, but we provide training on the other six alerts that I mentioned. So we put them all into that training. Outreach. The CHP, in cooperation with you, Mr. Ramos, as you know, and the Department of Justice, Bureau of Indian Affairs, our allied agency partners, we've teamed up in 2023 and provided information and outreach to over 170-

-Office of Native American Affairs.

I'm sorry. Yeah.

Because there's a bureau.

The federal side. It's cool.

Okay.

That's all right. One of many mistakes I've made in my career. I will chalk that up.

Please proceed.

Thank you. He was about to drop the gavel on you.

Well, no.

Yeah. Please. Feel free if she speaks up again. No, I'm joking. We did this outreach--170 allied agencies, nonprofit organizations, public safety partners, and the tribal communities throughout California in regard specifically to the Feather Alert, its activation criteria, and the capabilities and limitations of what the Feather Alert does and doesn't do. As you know, Mr. Chair, and the report I'm receiving is this training was successful. It's well received when we do it. I think you and I talked earlier. There needs to be more of that.

We need to continue those efforts, and we're all in to do that. Something I wanted to highlight in regards to our efforts to outreach to tribal communities and indigenous communities is in 2022, the CHP was awarded a NHTSA grant through the Office of Traffic Safety. That grant was for $400,000 and specifically encouraged the CHP to target outreach in Northern California. This specific grant was focused on what we call our valley: Golden Gate Northern Division, which is basically Sacramento, the Bay Area, all the way up through Northern California. With this grant, we created the CHP's Native Tribal Traffic Education Program.

This grant is a proactive program designed primarily to educate tribal communities on traffic safety issues: driving under the influence, and other things, occupant safety restraint, and the such, to encourage safe driving behavior as part of that, because we are there and we're present and we're in the community and we're already doing this outreach and education. We are also using that to our advantage to educate communities on the Feather Alert.

Bottom line, our goal is to improve safety and service to not only the indigenous community, to all communities in California, and make sure that we're outreaching and educating and serving every person in California through our safety programs and what the CHP has to offer. Some feedback that I've received is the tribal communities have shown appreciation for the Feather Alert.

They feel like, and they've indicated to us and our trainers as they go out and do this outreach, that in many ways, for the first time, they feel like we see them and they matter. And where maybe before, previously, they may have felt ignored in this area. They're encouraged by your legislation, that it's proof that this is a real issue and that law enforcement is willing to use our resources to help and assist them. Some criticism, and I'll be completely transparent on this.

We've also received some criticism about the way it's structured and how sometimes the alerts have to go through other law enforcement agencies. Let me say this, as the Commissioner, I'm open to any ideas and ways we can make this better. I think as a community we have to continue to strive to make improvement and make these things better. So anything we can do on our end and the voice that we could provide to help make these better, I'm open to it. So thank you for having me here today. That concludes what I was asked to speak about directly. I'm happy to entertain any questions you might have.

Thank you, Commissioner. We'll have questions after the second panelist speaks. Ms. Merri Lopez-Kiefer from the Attorney General's Office, Director.

And you can interrupt me. Mííyuyam! Hello, everyone. Good morning. My name is Merri Lopez-Keifer, and I am the Director of the Office of Native American Affairs for Attorney General Rob Bonta, California Department of Justice. Thank you, Chairman Ramos, and the honorable Members of the Select Committee on Native American Affairs for inviting me to participate in today's hearing.

As requested, I will share with you a brief snapshot of California's Native American population and then update you on the Department of Justice's implementation of Assembly Bill 3099, the first law to address the missing, murdered indigenous persons crisis here in California. I also affirm General Bonta's commitment to working in collaboration and coordination with our local state, tribal, federal justice partners, and most importantly, with the survivors and families impacted by loved ones who have gone missing and or have become victims of homicide.

So if I could just direct you to, I believe in your folders, there's two handouts. It's pretty blue maps of California, and then behind you in the room, to the left and the right, there's two maps reflecting California's population of Native Americans. California is home to one of the largest populations of American Indian Alaska Native people. According to the 2022 US Census Bureau, there are an estimated 1,114,580 American Indian Alaskan Natives in California, accounting for approximately 2.9% of the state's population.

The top five counties with the most American Indian Alaskan Native persons are Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Orange counties. The top five counties with the greatest proportion of American Indian Alaskan Native persons are Alpine County at 26%, or one in four people identifying as American Indian Alaskan Native, Inyo county at 16%, Del Norte county at 13%, Humboldt County 9%, and Mendocino County, 9%.

The gender distribution of the American Indian Alaskan Native population in California is approximately equal, with both men and women accounting for around 50% of the population. In addition, California is home to approximately 177 California Native American tribes, consisting of 109 federally recognized tribes and approximately 68 non-federally recognized tribes, and a little over 100 Indian reservations and rancherias that neighbor 34 of our 58 county jurisdictions.

Now, I'll briefly summarize AB 3099, authored by Assembly Member James Ramos and signed into law by Governor Newsom on September 25, 2020. The law addressed two long overdue concerns expressed by California Native American communities. The first was the need to have statewide consistency in the implementation of Public Law 83-280, also known as PL 280 or Public Law 280, that was the transfer of criminal jurisdiction on Indian lands from the federal government to the state. The second was to address the growing crisis of missing and murdered Native American peoples, particularly women and girls, in California's Indian country and broader Native American communities.

I'm not going into detail on the specific mandates entrusted upon the Department of Justice for AB 3099 but for purposes of today's hearing, I'll be focusing on the final mandate of that law, which was to conduct a study to determine the scope of the issue of missing and murdered Native Americans in California, identifying barriers to reporting, and ultimately issuing recommendations to the State Legislature. And that report is due in 2025. So what have we been doing?

This is to give you, again, just to share with you some of the things that the Department of Justice has been doing since we did receive funding from the Legislature to make sure that AB 3099 was being implemented. The Department of Justice has continued to directly engage with California's tribal governments, tribal community members, tribal advocates, and survivors and families about AB 3099, in addition to local law enforcement and state and federal justice partners.

We've been focusing on the tribal community's MMIP experiences and public safety concerns on and off Indian lands. Attorney General has issued two separate information bulletins that provide our justice partners with guidance on the enforceability of tribal court protection orders in California and the applicability of California's criminal trespass laws on Indian lands. These were two specific areas of concern that was raised by our tribal partners and the fight against MMIP.

Also, during 2022-2023 the Department of Justice provided critical support to our federal justice partners at the US Attorney's office in their southern, central, and northern districts in their efforts to successfully implement the federal law known as the Savanna's Act. That act addresses the MMIP crisis on a nationwide basis and involves improving communications between all levels of law enforcement. In April of 2023, the Department of Justice issued an updated Native American Marsy's Law Information card.

This card contains specific sections of the Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008 and contains a QR code that assists tribal citizens in locating culturally appropriate and informed services available to them statewide, by region, and by county. These combined resources are the first of their kind for tribal citizens in California. The Department of Justice has also launched a comprehensive tribal community survey to delve deeper into the MMIP crisis in California, focusing specifically on tribal community members' awareness and personal impact of the MMIP crisis.

A significant portion of this survey is dedicated to understanding the community's perception of law enforcement, as well as their experiences involving Public Law 280 and the processes associated with reporting emergencies in their communities. This survey also invites policy recommendations from the respondents, seeking their input on potential solutions and legislative changes that would benefit their communities.

This is actively occurring right now, and that we will still be doing our outreach into the spring to ensure a rich and diverse collection of perspectives, enhancing our understanding of the crisis, and informing our future actions. We have also been holding MMIP events since 2023, called Missing in California Indian Country--these are first of their kind events. They in part serve as critical public safety events for tribal communities and aim to elevate the state's response to the MMIP crisis.

Two events occurred in 2023, as I mentioned, one in the northern and one in the southern region. And at this time, I would really like to express our sincere gratitude for the partnership in bringing those events together. From the Blue Lake Rancheria, the Yurok Tribal Police Department, the Hoopa Valley Tribal Police Department, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, as well as the Riverside County Sheriff's Office and the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians.

These first-of-their-kind events allowed MMIP survivors and family members to share their experience, report a loved one missing, receive an update on an active missing person's case, and also provide a DNA sample for inclusion in the Department of Justice's Unidentified Persons database, a database that's been created to help bring closure for families. They also provide the opportunity for communities to get vital information from regional experts in combating human trafficking and learning about tribal, local, and state victim services.

These regional events are developed and planned in collaboration with the tribal governments within the respected regions to be most responsive to that region's tribal community's needs, and each occur on tribal land. This past summer, the Department of Justice co-convened an MMIP symposium in coordination, in collaboration with the New Mexico MMIP Task Force. This symposium included the research teams--so not the task force, but the research teams from New Mexico, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and ourselves.

It really focused on the interdisciplinary collaboration, interagency collaboration, and data transparency and accuracy. We made a lot of friends, too. During 2022-23, the DOJ participated in Feather Alert community and local law enforcement gatherings throughout the state, hosted by Assembly Member Ramos's office. We were privileged and honored to join you in those gatherings and to share important information on missing persons investigations.

There was a lot of information that we were able to share with the community, and we also heard a lot of information, or misinformation, about missing persons investigations. We've taken that information and we're working with our partners at the California Highway Patrol, and we're also creating a missing in California FAQ, frequently asked questions, for Native American tribes and tribal citizens--to answer those questions in one location.

Most importantly, and if I can just leave this with everyone today, if you believe someone you love or someone you know has gone missing, there is no wait period. Call 911 and report them missing. Television was not a good teacher for us, and we all have misconceptions of how long you need to wait, but as soon as you believe they're missing, call 911.

Most importantly, I've been asked to share with you today a summary of our successes and challenges in implementing AB 3099, specifically in regards to the survey, excuse me, the report that we are creating for the Legislature. So, throughout all the efforts I shared about today, there have been successes and challenges in fulfilling the duties we've been entrusted to carry out. The successes include, one: identification of educational and training needs for law enforcement.

This achievement is crucial to ensuring that law enforcement personnel are well equipped to respond to the needs the MMIP crisis presents, effectively and sensitively, through trauma-informed policing. Two: gathering recommendations from tribal members. We are actively engaging with tribal leaders and tribal community members and collecting their valuable recommendations and insights on how to address the MMIP crisis. This is ongoing and it is vital in developing and refining community centered and culturally informed processes. Number three: collaboration with tribal partners.

The DOJ has established strong collaborations with numerous tribal partners across the state. These partnerships have been instrumental in enhancing our understanding of the crisis and ensuring that our efforts are aligned with the needs and perspectives of tribal communities. And lastly, four, comprehensive data collection and analysis. Through various methods such as surveys, interviews, one-on-one meetings, and focus groups, the DOJ has been able to collect and analyze extensive data on the MMIP crisis.

This includes gaining insight from survivors, family members, tribal leaders, and local law enforcement, contributing to a rich and diverse understanding of the issue. Now to the challenges. Some of the challenges we have encountered are the following, one: accurate case counting. Our MMIP research team is currently identifying and evaluating internal California Department of Justice data collected from local law enforcement, focusing on the reporting of homicides and missing persons.

A significant part of our analysis is addressing the challenge of accurate case counting, which includes the potential for underreporting or misidentification of racial data in these cases. This complexity is further compounded by the current system limitations where there is only one available selection for the race of the missing person in reporting, potentially oversimplifying or misrepresenting multiracial identities. Accurately determining the total number of homicide or missing person cases remains a challenge, primarily due to potential issues of misidentification and underreporting.

Delving deeper into these aspects requires extensive conversations with both law enforcement and tribal communities. Number two: inconsistencies in data protocols. The DOJ has encountered challenges related to inconsistencies in data collection and reporting protocols across different agencies. For instance, we are examining the issue of varying protocols for closing missing person cases, as there is no standardized procedure across different agencies in the state.

This lack of uniformity can lead to inconsistencies in how cases are documented and resolved, impacting the overall reliability and comparability of data across jurisdictions. Harmonizing these protocols is essential for ensuring accurate and reliable data. And three: building trust for effective data gathering. Establishing trust within tribal communities for effective data gathering and sharing is a continual challenge. This involves not only respecting cultural sensitivities, but also addressing historical mistrust towards external entities.

In closing, the California Department of Justice remains committed to the safety and well being of tribal people and their communities. We are encouraged by the successes achieved so far in the implementation of AB 3099 and are confident that through our collaborative efforts with all of our partners in justice, we have built a strong foundation for continued progress. Thank you, No$úun Lóoviq! My heart is full.

Thank you so much to this panel for bringing forward that vital information. We wanted to recognize Assembly Member Corey Jackson, who's joined us here today, and Assembly Member Pilar Schiavo. And would you have any statements or any questions? Yeah? Go ahead, Assembly Member.

Hi, good morning. And apologies. I know I was late, and I may have missed some of this, but I was looking through the packet and I saw that there were three requests that were not activated for a Feather Alert. And I don't know if this was already discussed, but is there an explanation of why or what happened there?

Yeah. In general, the agency that we work with, the local law enforcement agency, we're working through that process, seems the criteria was met. They didn't feel like the criteria was met, so that's why the issue wasn't--the alert wasn't issued. I have read the cases, it'd be inappropriate because of HIPAA and other things for me to get into the details and the facts of them. But in short, that's why I'm happy to talk offline on maybe some of the more details of them, but-

Generally, without sharing any details. Do you think those were-

I'm sorry-

Do you think those were accurate decisions in the-

Yeah, I think, to be honest, one of them I thought was a wobbler, and that decision was made with CHP and the local law enforcement agency and probably could have went either way. I know the message I'm going to communicate back to my people is: in those cases, I'd rather err on the side of caution and issue the alert. But, yeah, the other ones--really where the hang up comes in, or the threshold they're trying to meet is, some specific articulable facts or evidence that the person's at risk or at danger. And sometimes that's a threshold that's not being met through facts or evidence.

That seems like a little bit of what you raised around, if someone's missing, call 911. But then there's other information that they have to be missing for so long or you have to meet this threshold, and it creates challenges for people to be able to get action on something that they're really concerned about. How do you kind of resolve that?

Yeah, I think the ones that aren't meeting the threshold are--there's no factual base on some of these. Sometimes people are, nobody knows their whereabouts, but that doesn't mean that the person necessarily wants to be found or is missing. And so, there's so many factors that go into making those decisions, obviously, the age, the mental status, medications, so many decisions, so many factors that go into it. But really, I think that's where it gets down to the details, and that's where the rub is, are we able to articulate that they're at risk?

I agree with you on kind of erring on the side of caution. I wonder if in those instances where it doesn't quite meet the threshold, is there any kind of follow up? Because probably as time goes by, the situation becomes a little bit more clear.

Yeah, for sure. And thank you for the question, because I think it's important to state, for me to state, that just because they don't meet the criteria of the alert doesn't mean that we just wash our hands of the case and put it aside. And one case in particular, again, I got to be careful of the specific details because of people's privacy. But one case in particular, the local agency involved did not feel it met the criteria.

We got word of the case through other means and contacted the local agency and agreed through the facts that it didn't meet the criteria, but started taking other measures to identify them. Some of those things that we're able to do is just traditional police work. We're able to tap into LPR, license plate recognition data if we have evidence and try to pin down a location. In certain situations, we're able to use cell phone data and identify locations and try to track people down. And so, I think it's important to state that just because an alert isn't issued doesn't mean that law enforcement is not working actively to find those people and bring resolution.

And do we know how many folks, I mean, how many indigenous folks over the last year have gone missing but not requested a Feather Alert? Because I wonder if there's a disconnect between people even knowing that this is an option out there. Right? That they can-

I don't know that because we don't know. Right? But I think that's the main point of our outreach effort, is to educate people and tribal communities on what resources are there and how we can better serve them.

Just two last questions, if that's okay. I know you mentioned one of the challenges was how the noticing has to go out and sometimes has to go through certain agencies first. Can you explain a little bit more about that and what the issue is there?

So the way the statute is structured now is we're required to work with local law enforcement agency to issue the alert. And that's the criticism we've seen from some of the tribal communities is that kind of middleman. And is there a way to work around some of that for tribal communities?

Because it has to be issued by the CHP.

Well, the alert has to be issued by the CHP. The way it's structured. We have the tools and the mechanism to do that. But the middleman is that local law enforcement agency that the request comes into. Some do really good. And I think--this is not my opinion--what's been expressed to us is that sometimes that middleman creates issues in the perspective of tribal communities.

And there's not a way to go direct?

Well, the statute right now requires us to work collaboratively with the local law enforcement agency. So is there a way? Yes. But under the current statute, no. We feel like.

Okay. And I wondered, Director Lopez-Kiefer, if you could talk a little bit about, you said that the data collection and information that you're getting to get a better picture is helping. Is there any kind of top lines of what you're learning about common threads about why people are missing or any kind of lessons from that that we can learn?

We're hopeful that the report that we're going to be providing you will help present a clear picture as to why members of the tribal community may be hesitant to call 911. And that is dealing with understanding the state's own role in creating that hesitation. And that's by understanding the historical trauma, the generational trauma that was created by the state's actions. I know you're going to be hearing from tribal leaders shortly, and they may be in a better position to share that with you and express that to you. But our work will be presenting--we'll hopefully be able to present that in a manner that matches the recommendations that we would be making to you.

There's a lot of, when we participated in those Feather Alert gatherings hosted by Assembly Member Ramos, it was as if a burden was being put on the tribes and the tribal community to know about this alert system. This is a tool for California law enforcement. It's our responsibility to know about the alert and to be able to communicate what is needed to get the alert to our tribal families.

Being able to articulate why someone's in danger is a complicated matter that could be informed by understanding, again, the historical trauma that that family may have experienced contributing to why they are in danger. But as far as data is required, we're going to be able to, through the surveys and the focus groups that we are asking tribal members to participate in, it is giving quantitative and qualitative data.

So hopefully that qualitative data will be able to inform directly as to why family members are going missing, the different contributing factors to that. MMIP is not just a law enforcement issue. There are many other parties that should be involved and at the table to address this crisis. And so hopefully, our report will be able to share that with you better than I'm able to right now.

Thank you.

Thank you for that. And thank you, Commissioner, for your testimony and the availability to look at those criticisms. And that's what this hearing is meant to do, is look at some of that, see how we move forward with Feather Alert to see how it better serves the community and better serves the purpose that's there. So I want to thank you for that. And I also want to thank you for bringing up Public Law 280 as an area that still needs to be addressed, as far as why there's areas that we feel that local law enforcement don't truly understand that role when it comes to tribal lands.

And also with the Attorney General's Office, I'm hearing that you're on track for being able to present those findings here in the 2025 timeline. And so I want to thank you for that commitment, but also want to ask, is victim services part of that overall structure that we'll be looking at when we get that report coming back to us?

Because I believe that just going through the Feather Alert and thinking about it, just last week we had a Feather Alert implemented. And once Indian country got that, it was spread throughout different tribal communities, adding to making sure that people knew about it, and the individual was found and was brought back to the tribal government.

But we want to make sure that victims services and resources, someone that's there to work with somebody for that mental health component of it, is also something that's being afforded. Coming from county government, we know that the county DAs and the state have those types of mechanisms there. So we want to make sure that that is branching over into tribal communities. So I want to thank you all for being here for your testimony, and thank you as we move to our next panel.

Thank you.

I also want to recognize Assembly Member Mathis for joining us here. Our next panel will be tribal perspective on implementation of Feather Alert. We have Yurok Tribal Chairman Joe James, Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria Chairwoman Josefina Frank, Pechanga Band of Mission Indians Council Member and Commissioner and Commission on the Status of Women and Girls Catalina Chacon, and Indigenous Justice Founder and President, Morningstar Gali. Please come up.

I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to bring forward a voice that needs to be heard during these dialogues. And if we are talking about moving forward and amending, making things better, that this is the voice that needs to be heard. So we continue to work with you and hear from and interested in hearing from you areas that were successes because we know there was two alerts that were issued and those two were brought back, were found safely, and we know that there was others that were asked to be a feather alert introduction. But then local law enforcement.

So the way that the bill works is that you call 911 and local law enforcement comes in, you will allude to it, that at that point, where is the responsibility of the individual to say that they're Native American so that they know that that second step arsenal is there available for law enforcement? But then does law enforcement in the local jurisdictions understand that there's a component now for that? And so we want to work through that. The bill is designed to have a speedy response.

When a 911 call comes in, local jurisdictions respond. They're the first ones on the scene to look at those issues. And so we want to better understand that and how to again, move forward to ensure that a piece of legislation that's designed to work and protect Native Americans here in the State of California is doing just that. So we're going to start with Chairman Joe James from the Yurok tribe.

Good morning. Aye kui nicknau. Joe James, Yurok Tribal Chairman I come from the village of Sregon, located on the Klamath River. I'm going to talk about the importance of the feather alert from a tribal leader's perspective, the success, the challenges and issues. I'll start for again. As I mentioned in the press release, it's an honor here to be here today. I always think about this place, look back 20-30-40-50 years ago. I thank you, Assemblymember Ramos and your colleagues. I thank the sheriffs for being in this room. When I sit behind you, I think about 20-30-40-50 years talking about this topic and how far we have come as a whole. I like the dialogue of 2024, building bridges, working together. We need to, and we need to continue to do that. The feather alert is a key part of MMIP, but it's just a tool. It's one of resources that is needed.

I mentioned earlier in our press release that we just got out of a feather alert of a Yurok tribal citizen. As a tribal leader, sometimes you know that family, sometimes you don't, but you carry that burden and that history, who we are as people, indigenous people. Nobody in this room played that part to the history of us, of how we were mistreated, how we were tried to be wiped off our identity, how we would try to be defeated. We're still here.

But it's important to know, everybody, that trauma still exists and we still pack it with us today until things are made of success. And MMIP is one of that, is working us together. We're saying no more. But again, it's important, and it's still going to be with us as boarding schools, to wipe our language, our identity. As I mentioned, MMIP is not new. It's been here for decades, for years. I'm very proud to be in this room.

I'm very proud to work with our brothers and sisters from the state of government, from law enforcement, to make that change, to be part of that changed. Of course, I have a lot of people, as the sister mentioned in a press release, the people that are gone, they don't have that voice, they don't have that closure. We're doing our part as a tribal leader, as a government, as a community, as an activist, as an organization.

That's the weight and the burden that we all take and have to carry. So you mentioned there's not enough states to have MMIP. We're going to speak about California and how we are leading an example and making that. change. Let me read the feather alert criteria. There is five of them. I won't hit all of them, but there is five. Missing person. As indigenous women or indigenous person. When you're reading that from law enforcement, that's a criteria, and I understand that, and I get that.

But for me, when I read that, how we got here in creating this bill and this law and the generational trauma that has to be put on the table, that woman is not missing. That child is not missing. She is missing. But when I read that criteria, whether I'm a dispatcher, whether I'm a law enforce, CHP or the sheriff's or an agency, the intent of how we got here, how challenging, collectively as a whole, we came together to pass a feather alert.

We're only 4, 3 or four states in the whole United States. In the whole United States. Murder at Big Horn, if you get a chance, watch it, it's in Montana. If there is not an Amber Alert, feather alert in that state, that is wrong. And I tie that back to the setting. When you're reading that criteria and receiving that. I know there's space that we work in with tribal government, State of California, a law enforcement. I get that, understand that. But when you're receiving that and looking at that criteria, you're packing more than that criteria and how we got here with that law. You know, we've had a missing tribal member in the Bay Area. I have a great working relationship with our sheriff. He can call me, I can call him within Humboldt County.

I cannot speak for other counties or I can't speak other tribes, have great relationship with other counties or not, but we can't be caught in the middle of CHP and a tribe. I know our county will work together with us, but I'm not going to take, that's across the board without California of all counties. Assembly Member Pilar was hitting it on the head. Why have those individuals got denied? The local agency denied it.

We, as a Yurok tribe submitted that back at home with our MMIP investigator. So I think there needs to be, I know we have liaisons, SCHP, and we're all in this together. We're all in this together, want to build it to make that change. But I'm not going to take a handshake or a call. I don't work with other counties. I know we work together, but that's not across the board.

And so that's a gap we've got to address, whether it's making an amendment, working with the counties, or also tribes filing directly with CHP. And this is not taking away anything with us at home. I'm looking at us across the board, and I'm looking at this Bay Area situation, because there's going to be another instances like that, unfortunately, down the road that's going to fall outside of Humboldt and Delano county, the tribal citizens that I've got to worry and work about. So I bring that forward.

I think there needs to be continuing the great work, the training, the education, the culture, how we got here, the feather alert, the intent of it. And so again, I look forward to continuing to work with yourself, Ramos and Mr. Mathis and all the other colleagues. Great work, very proud. But at the same time, we can't be caught in the middle because the local agency didn't determine we were eligible for a feather alert.

And again, when I think of feather alert, look at all the testimony, the trauma, the identity, our children gone, that's got to come to a factor into this. And so, again, I think there should be more, continue that training throughout the counties, throughout California. I think we need to be more proactive on the local level throughout counties in California. And again, as a very proud and honored to be with the sheriff's here today. Your statement, without saying things, says a lot.

We need more of your colleagues on the front lines, and they probably are. But where we are, we've got to move forward as a whole, as a group. And being in a room and leading by example says a lot. And it's going to continue to build bridges. It's going to continue to build trust. So thank you for this testimony Assemblymember Ramos.

Thank you, Chairman, for that testimony and enlightening areas into the feather alert. And it's true, just like the press conference and even the term feather alert, it carries so much more, so much weight for our people. And that's why we're here today, building allies and collaboration to start to finally address the issue in bringing relationship building to the table. Thank you so much for that. Our next speaker from Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria, Chairwoman Josephina Frank.

Good morning. My name is Josephina Frank. I'm the tribal Chairwoman for Bear River Rancheria, we're located in Humboldt County. Again, I want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak here today and for all the tribal leaders and law enforcement in the room that are doing all of the behind the scenes work to make sure that our people are safe. I apologize in advance if what I say today is all over the place, but it'll tie together at the end. My concern as a tribal leader is the relationship that we had with our sheriff's Department and our officers and not necessarily the sheriff. And so when I look at the criteria for the feather alert, you must be a missing person. A missing person who is an indigenous woman or indigenous person, and that the investigating law enforcement agency has utilized available local and tribal resources.

When I read that, I see that as being the stop for tribal members, because those relationships have not been built with our tribal membership and local law enforcement outside of our tribal police, I'm very thankful for our Tribal Police Department because they have built a great rapport with membership. So our members feel comfortable going and speaking to them when things happen on the Rancheria. Whether that be something of a small nature or a larger event, if they were hurt or a victim of crime, our members feel comfortable talking to them. So what has happened historically is when those events happen, if there is an incident of violence, our tribal police are called to the member's home. They speak with the tribal member and their family. They take the reports. And because we are PL 280, the sheriff's office is called out.

And it's not the sheriff himself that comes out, but it's the officers underneath him. When they come out, it is the expectation that they ask the victim again what happened. At that point in time, not taking into consideration all of the trauma that that person has just gone through and everything else that tribal nations have gone through, you're asking someone to relive the trauma to a piece of paperwork that you must complete, because the officers that respond don't want to accept our tribal officers documentation. So I didn't come here today to cause upset to anyone, but I also didn't come here today to sugarcoat stuff. So those are things that we've seen. And when that happens and no reports are made and no arrests are made, that individual who caused harm against someone either gets to remain in the home or they are detained and they're driven down the street off tribal property. But then they come back, and then there's retribution to the person that reported the violence.

And therein lies another murder victim or another female or child who's going to come up missing. So we have the ability to address those immediately so that we don't have to utilize the feather alert, but there has to be a collaboration between all of the tribes. And I spoke to Chairman James a while ago, and I was saddened that Bear River has not been a part of everything that's happened up until this point and the work that's been done when it affects us, too.

I got a call last weekend, I believe, from our chief, asking if my kids knew the young girl from Yurok that was missing. Like I had mentioned in the press conference, all of our communities are intertwined. All of our people are related, whether that's Northern California, Southern California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and we all speak to one another. And it's very frustrating to see the criteria that's listed here when the biggest piece of that, the trust piece, is not there. And I do agree with Chairman James' suggestion of the direct filing with CHP. I think it's important that we and that tribes have an avenue to report that and not leave it into the hands of someone who doesn't know the community, who doesn't know the families that have been affected. Everything that has to do with MMIP and us as indigenous peoples is very important.

And I'm very thankful that everyone in this room and outside of this room is talking about it and working and doing their due diligence to make sure that all of our families and tribal members are safe. But there has to be something else. This has to be looked at so that tribal members can utilize this when it's needed, and it's not left up to the discretion of someone else. If they determine that it's an emergency or if they determine that all of the criteria is met.

If we as a family feel that one of our family members or tribal members have had something happen to them, that should mean something. A few months ago, we had a phone call of voicemail left on our office phone from a tribal member who was at a neighboring reservation. It was left on a Saturday, no one got it until Monday, but that was the only number she knew was the tribal office. And because there's no relationship between our tribal members and our local law enforcement outside of tribal police, they're not going to call, they're not going to report. So how do we fix that so that those relationships start to form? Chairwoman earlier spoke about the wraparound services, and those are extremely important because these alerts go out. I pray that every time an alert goes out that the family member is found and taken home and that they're okay.

But the effect of that person missing is still there, that trauma is still there, and we're not doing anything to ensure that the community is okay in their absence and okay when they return home. That's the problem. So I ask when you have this hearing and you listen to all of the testimony, that all of these items are taken back and they're reviewed. I was speaking to Sheriff Hansel earlier and we had a meeting with federal partners in Northern California last week. And a lot of the items that were being discussed last week were the same items that were talked about a year ago. I understand things move slow, but I think things move too slow and there has to be a bigger push to get all of these items working together. There's so many moving parts, but I personally feel that for myself, I don't want the lip service anymore. And perhaps many other tribes and tribal leaders feel the same way.

We're tired of hearing the same thing over and over. We will work on these things, we'll fix these things. And I'm extremely grateful to you for bringing this back to the table a year later to see what is working and what is not working. So I've expressed to you what I feel is not working. I appreciate the time today. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that vital input into the topic and thoughts of moving forward. Next we have Pechanga Banda Mission Indians Council Member and Commissioner, Status of Women and Girls, Catalina Chacon.

Mayo Yum notoon Catalina chicone. Good morning. My name is Catalina Chacon and I'm a Pechanga tribal councilwoman for the Pechanga Band of Indians in Southern California. I also sit on the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. I am the Vice Chair of the Tassin group as well, and I also sit as a Vice Chair for the California Tribal Families Coalition. I wear many hats because I want to represent my tribe the best I can, and I'm here to serve them.

Thank you for the opportunity to share some perspectives with you about the feather alert and suggestions I have for an improvement. First, let me say that the passage of AB 1314 was a significant step forward in providing tribal governments with a necessary tool to help locate and protect our missing native youth. Fortunately, our tribe has only had to use the feather alert once, but we were quite frustrated with the lack of responsiveness by the CHP.

Last July, our Pechanga family and child services reported a 14 year old Pechanga youth missing who was under the jurisdiction of our Pechanga court. She was missing from her home. Her parents had originally reported her as a runaway. There were also reportings of her in the Fresno area, which is about 300 miles north of Pechanga. To further compound this issue, the youth had a history of mental health and substance abuse issues.

Given the concern for her safety, our Pechanga Tribal Rangels and our Child and Family Services Department followed the protocol for the feather alert as outlined in the California Government Code, section 8594.13. Our Child and Family services reported the missing minor to the tribal Rangers, our tribal law enforcement, who then contacted local law enforcement, the Riverside County Sheriff's office. To activate a feather alert, the following criteria must be met, which was mentioned. Number one, the missing person is an indigenous woman or indigenous person. Number two, the investigative law enforcement agency has utilized all available local and tribal resources. Number three, the law enforcement agency determines that the person has gone missing under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances. Number four, the law enforcement agency believes that the person is in danger. And number five, there is information available that, if disseminated to the public, could assist in the safe recovery of the missing person. In our analysis, within our tribe, all the criteria were met.

But to our frustration and disappointment, the CHP declined to issue a feather alert. We sent out our own alert through social media and ultimately we recovered our missing youth without the feather alert being issued. But this experience demonstrates there's room for improvement in this vital program. We offer a couple of recommendations for the committee's consideration. First, we recommend including law enforcement agencies of federally recognized tribal governments in the definition of law enforcement agencies for purposes of the feather alert. In other words, also allow tribal law enforcement agency to make the request directly to the CHP. This would help streamline communication between the most local agency and the CHP. And oftentimes tribal law enforcement receives more detailed and updated information because of the trust they have with the tribal communities that they serve.

Second, we recommend that the CHP declines to issue a feather, when they decline to issue a feather alert, that we be provided a reason for them declining that to the tribal government, that would be helpful to us and moving forward. The person that we had missing was a personal I've been dealing with this young child since the age of four, when she was removed from her parents home. I know this child closely. We had as much information. We really felt like we had met all the criteria. It was very disheartening when we were declined to get the feather alert. I'm happy to say that the child is safe now, but there should have been - weeks went by before anything could happen. And I feel like our own alert mechanism on social media was able to get this child back. But if we had the feather alert, and we should be using it.

I mean, there is a reason why you brought this forward to help our tribal governments or help our tribal citizens, and we want to use that. I think that having the sheriffs here and present today, I can see their willingness to want to make a difference in tribal communities. And I look forward to that. I am happy to see the involvement that you brought forward. Assemblyman Ramos and I look forward to continuing this. I just thank you for convening this hearing to hear the various perspectives on the feather alert. And again, this is a vital tool for tribal governments and native youth. We look forward to working with you to strengthen this program. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for that testimony and firsthand experience and certainly pieces of legislation that are introduced. We want to make sure that we fine tune those and hear from those that are out there. And everyone in the room, I think, is here to try to make it so that California's first people and a tool that's used for them is adequate in being used in areas that needs to be used. So thank you for that testimony and the recommendations there. Our next speaker is indigenous justice founder and President Morning Star Gali, who will touch on some of the statistics. It was mentioned from assemblymember Schiavo as far as how many feather alerts are being implemented. But we know that our people suffer at a greater cause of violence based on the statistics. And we know that if I believe five alerts were requested, two were implemented, and three were not based on that, but even at that five request. And when you look at the statistics, you know that there's more harm that's coming against our people that isn't even being reported. So it's that trust factor that we want to also identify. Ms. Morning Star.

Chimi Sunway, Morning Star Gali, Ilakata Ge Ma Acimawi is Chi TC Matikcha. Thank you so much for allowing me to be here this morning and sit alongside these powerful tribal leaders. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to share a bit with you this morning. I will start by sharing a personal story of how it is that I got involved with the current crisis of missing, murdered indigenous peoples, and then I will share those statistics as requested. It was in 2012.

I was working as the tribal historic preservation officer for my tribe, Pitt River Tribe, which encompasses a four county area of Shasta, Modoc, Lassen, and Siskiyou counties. We do not have that communication at that time, we did not have that communication with local law enforcement agencies. And so in working as the Tippo and within our tribal offices, there was a blizzard that was taking place during the winter.

I had a family that came in, and they were very upset, and their loved one had been missing for a number of days. They knew that his truck was located on a mountain road, but he was nowhere to be found. The truck was running, and it was because of the snowstorm, there was no identifying information of where he could be. They contacted local law enforcement, and there was no response from Modoc County at the time. They came down to the tribal office, and I was able to create a missing persons flyer. We distributed it. The family had to set up their own search party and search team to locate their missing relative, Dewey McGarva. He was not found. It was not until six months later, when the snow melted, that his remains were found in a cattle trough at a nearby rancher's home.

They know that these were suspicious circumstances, as this tribal member had always lived up in the mountains, had survived the snowstorms, and so they knew that there was something of concern that was also never investigated during that time. Eight years later, my friend, relative, and tribal member Yogi McGarva, who sat on tribal council, a two spirit relative, was killed by his partner, by his non native partner in his tribal home on tribal lands of the likely Rancheria in likely California. And so this speaks to the patterns that occur, that when one relative goes missing, there is a situation of a relative that was murdered through interpersonal violence.

We have had the support of the office of Native American Affairs from the State Department of Justice in supporting the prosecution of that case. But it is really challenging, especially within northeastern California, to be able to address some of these issues. I'll share that last spring we attended the Department of the Interiors not invisible act hearings where we provided testimony and supported survivors and survivor families providing testimony to the Federal Government about the current needs, shortcomings and opportunities in our efforts on behalf of indigenous communities. We collaborated with DOJ to support listening sessions with tribal communities across California. And consistently, we heard from our tribal and intertribal communities that although there is a willingness to collaborate and coordinate efforts with law enforcement, often there is a lack of infrastructure, effort, or willingness to work meaningfully together. As AB 1314 works to close this gap, we also consistently heard that our communities instinctively rely on one another in times of crisis, making us the experts on our own experiences.

We heard time and time again that equitable investment into services and grassroots organizations is urgently needed to complement and close the gap between communities and government. We carry the knowledge and trust of our peoples. With the proper investments, we can collectively actualize the vision of AP 1314 to ensure a whole community response in times of crisis in addition to the necessary ongoing work to prevent, minimize and heal from these ruptures of safety, it's the maintenance of community wellness that will keep us safe.

I spoke earlier during the press conference on the guaranteed income that we will be piloting. That has been two years in process to where we finally will be launching. That we are so grateful to the role of Mrs. Chacon on the status Of Women, Department of Status of Women, and how we've been able to pilot through the city and County of San Francisco of providing indigenous survivors. As we're all aware, the Friendship House Recovery center is located in San Francisco. And so as we're able to support a number of family members of missing and murdered indigenous relatives through that program, get them into SLE sober living environments, and be able to resource the families in a way that while they are dealing with the crisis of their loved one that has gone missing or being murdered, they're able to heal from both substance abuse and alcoholism.

And so we hope that the financial burden that is lifted for them as survivors, that they will have that deeper capacity to engage in care, connect with community and to heal. And we trust that the resources that are provided in that support will provide them the type of relief that comes from knowing that your basic needs are met. We are hoping that as we pilot this in San Francisco, that it will be replicated in all counties across the states. As we know that there is Department, DOSW Department on the status of women funding available in all counties and we would like to see that occur.

Sorry, let me share this. We're concerned about how AB 1314 impacts youth and foster care. That hasn't been mentioned yet. It's really disappointing to hear that as federally recognized tribes, as Yurok Tribe, as Bear River, as Pechanga are putting forward the feather alerts, that it is the Highway Patrol that is deciding that they don't meet the criteria for any federally recognized tribe, for any tribe that is putting forward on behalf of their tribal nation, they should absolutely be taking into consideration that if it is meeting the criteria on behalf of the tribe, it should be meeting it on behalf of the Highway Patrol through IJ. When we are assessing the needs and advocating alongside on behalf of system involved indigenous peoples throughout Northern California, we are seeking to elevate needed support in creating pathways of healing and empowerment for those survivors of violence. We are understanding that although we organize throughout our tribal and urban communities, we are accountable for responding to the changing needs of those communities.

And so we are working for structural change and transformation of these dominant narratives in which our stories are told, narratives that blame and further marginalize and marginalize system impacted indigenous women and girls. And so those are the stories that are being put out in the media that we're constantly challenging. There's the victim blaming, there's the finger pointing. What did they do to get themselves into this situation, where we see with non native peoples that that's not the story and that's not the narrative that is told.

And so with that, we understand that as native peoples, we will likely not get justice within the courtrooms, but we can have healing within our communities. And so that is the work that we do in terms of providing emergency aid, emergency support, the advocacy, the MMIW rallies and events. And so each and every one of us is a walking miracle. Our ancestors have blessed us with life born of their own commitments to preserving, protecting and defending our cultural lifeways, our ceremonies, and our communities.

We honor this gift by living and carrying forward their commitments to their lives and to each other. We honor this gift by loving each other. Together, we will hold vigil. We sing, we dance, and we pray for justice, for safety, and for change. Let us celebrate these accomplishments by committing to continuing to build safe and more resourced communities where relatives are supported, connected to our culture, and safe enough to live their lives. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the panel's testimony and insight into areas of improvement and discussion and relationship building. Is there any comments or questions from Assemblymember Mathis.

Thank you. The thing that keeps coming to mind, and this is ongoing for as long as I can remember, is that on the tribal lands, you don't feel like you can call 911. And there's that gap and there's that problem, and you kind of brought it up. How do we get them to interact better? There's always been that disconnect between how do the sheriffs interact with the tribal governments? In some places it's really good. Other places it's horrible. And so it's, how do we create that stop gap while still protecting sovereignty? But where it's going to be that guaranteed, it's no more of this, but it's this where we come together.

For the CHP on that side, I can't help but think that I want to say James and I, but Assemblymember Ramos and I have some work to do to look at. Is there an automatic assumption that needs to be put into place? So instead of going, okay, maybe this is a feather alert or not, law enforcement reads it as we're automatically going to assume it is and take action immediately until we find out that it's not that way, there's an immediate assist. And I know we have in the next panel law enforcement coming up. So as you guys prepare for that, I'd like to hear that side of it, because I know it's a lot of resources. It's a lot of stuff that goes into automatically kicking that in. But when we know the cases and we know the data, it's a different conversation versus if my son goes, I have an autistic kid, and he used to elope and he'd take off and he'd disappear.

And that's scary as a dad, that your little boy is gone. I've had that happen to me, and you've got to call law enforcement. Everybody's out looking for him, and here's this little autistic boy running around on the street, and they found him. He was running up the on ramp onto the highway because he was going to walk to his grandma's house. Now, if that can happen to me, what's happening on the tribes, what's happening in other places, what's happening in society.

And for me, it was an automatic assumption, hey, here's an autistic kid. We got to go now. And thankfully, we found him, but it still took like an hour to find him. So when we look at that, it's what mechanisms do we put into place from state law where the mechanism will work, while also looking at, okay, yes, there's a resource problem, yes, there's a state budget deficit, all these things are happening.

But we have to be cognizant of what do we do to trigger immediate resources? And then how do we, within the tribal communities, build that trust, as was said, where you feel comfortable to call, where you don't feel like there's going to be retribution to your family, where we start pushing that out of the subculture of the different peoples.

So, I mean, with that, I think you already kind of said it. That's something that we need to look at. Is there anything else to add to that to go in more depth?

Yeah. I think we have a success with the Feather Alert. Anything that is something new, there's always a learning curve. Bumps in the road. Right? And Assemblymember Mathis, I went for that same feeling about a month ago with an optic. So it's very scary. So same thing on the highway. But anyway, I went through that. It's scary.

It's been years. He's graduating high school this year.

Yeah, it's been a while. But you have a new system, a federal system. What are the gaps within that system? We know the history. We know the trauma. Those are facts. And again, what I'm hearing, everybody room wants to come together, to work together. We're not to take nobody's jurisdiction. Want you to respect ours and respect yours. What are those gaps? Here's the big picture, right? That scenario are that young girl is missing.

We just went through it our second time around with Humboldt in Del Norte County. It was pretty good. We got it out there. And that young girl was able to come home. But we had to go through this first instance of getting denied. Right. And so again, how can we now? Everybody in the press conference, everybody in this room, bridge those scratch was education and training. It's not about just the Feather Alert. That Feather Alert's got to come with that historical indigenous trauma education training. Do you know what you're saying when you deny a Feather Alert? It's not just that individual. You're saying that. So again, I'm looking at ways bringing away the room, fill the gaps.

But that's what you just said is important because it's that training aspect in dealing with everything I've dealt with in this building for the last 10 years, whether it was fires or floods or here when you're talking about emergency response, the key to emergency response is training and having those elements work together and.

Make that plug again, that advocacy for tribes to work directly with CHP. I still think tribes want to work with the local jurisdiction absolutely can. But also you can amend it to include tribal governance. To work directly with CHP, to act in that real-time. It's not about taking nobody. This is about all. We come together in real-time. We got an hour to take action. Thank you.

Thank you so much for all of you had something.

Oh, I just wanted the statistics that were mentioned before the next panel comes up, and so that it can be included that four out of five of native women have experienced some form of violence within their lifetime. That's 84% of native women, more than half who have experienced sexual violence. Native women face murder rates more than 10 times the national average, even though we are 1% of the population and 2% of the US total population of women.

Homicide is the third leading cause of death among native girls and women ages 10 to 24, and the fifth leading cause of death for native women ages 25 to 34. According to the National Crime Information Center, in 2016, there were 5712 reports of missing native women and girls through the US Department of Justice Federal Missing Persons database. But then there were only logged 116 of those cases through NamUs.

This number is likely higher as there is no reliable count of how many native women, girls, and two-spirit peoples go missing or murdered annually. And so when those Feather Alerts are denied, just as Chairman James mentioned, that historical information and background needs to be taken into consideration when the Feather Alerts are denied by CHP. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that. And thank you for your testimony. And really, it goes to Chairman Joe James. When the trauma is there and we're trying to build that mutual respect, mutual trust, and then when a Feather Alert is denied to be implemented, that just furthers the distrust between all the work that we're trying to do.

So there's much more to it when you deal with California's first people, when we're moving forward, and then get denied all the historical, everything that comes up, even myself on salmon Wellington reservation, how to build a relationship with local law enforcement. All that comes into perspective. So there has to be a component for that. And also adding and looking at reasons to decline that might help better that mutual respect, understanding, to understand why.

Because quite frankly, when you get denied, what comes first to your mind is because of who we are, and that shouldn't be here in the year 2024. That's why we're sitting on this dais. That's why we're able to bring these discussions, hard discussions sometimes, for the State of California, to start to come to terms with some of this, the historical, but also trying to build collaboration to ensure that we're making sure that the safety of our people are there.

So I want to thank you all for that. And here, each and every one of those areas there, wraparound services was one that I think we need to focus on. Because when someone goes missing, I mean, you talked about it here, what's going through that person's mind during that time, that's where you need to have somebody to talk to, work with you through those things. Right? And then ultimately, our goal is to make sure people come back home through the issuance of Feather Alert CLETS access, AB 39, all these issues, and all these tools, but where does that individual go from that point?

Right.

Wraparound services that are afforded other places in the State of California. So we want to make sure that that's making its way into Indian country. So I want to thank you for being on this panel, and we will be reaching out to further discuss this of how we move forward. Thank you so much. We do have, before we go on to panel three, I wanted to see if Taralyn Ipiña wanted to give her testimony.

I want to thank Assemblymember Ramos, the state Legislature, and CHP for working diligently to develop and implement the Feather Alert law. I'm here today to share my personal experiences with the MMIP crisis. My grandmother experienced violence and was murdered in the late 1970s on the reservation, leaving six children behind. During that time, there wasn't any formal tribal government, no tribal law enforcement.

There wasn't a place for her to ask for help. Prior to her murder, the non-native perpetrator kidnapped her six-year-old son, but she still did not go to law enforcement because of that mistrust. That same man later shot her in the chest in front of my grandfather and killed her. Our lives have been forever changed. Unfortunately, this trauma is not unique to my family.

With the implementation of AB 1314 Feather Alert, we are bringing light to the darkness and creating a toolbox for tribes and law enforcement to utilize to combat the MMIP crisis. However, the real-time implementation of the bill shows that certain amendments are needed to truly meet the intent of the law, and my family and I have personally suffered as a result. In the summer of 2023, my adult sister went missing in San Francisco.

After six days of no communication, my family decided to file a missing persons report. And that was extremely a difficult decision for my family on whether or not we were going to call what we should do. Would we somehow, if she was doing something that was illegal, sometimes get her jail time or something like that? So we finally called, and without a few days, we asked for a Feather Alert, and I explained why my sister and indigenous women fit the parameters.

I read the actual language from the law to the officer to make sure explain to where it fit within the law. And when I finally received a callback, my perspective was that the officer was looking for disqualifying information versus qualifying variables. As soon as I mentioned her history with substance abuse, the officer, his tone changed immediately. He said, oh, okay. And then the line of questioning kind of changed. And I was eventually told that a woman doesn't go missing. It's a choice.

There is a limited understanding of the unique challenges that native people face in California. No understanding of our trauma or the crisis of MMIP. That is the very reason we have the Feather Alert. When native people are missing, statistics show that they often become victims of violent crimes such as human trafficking, sexual assault, and murder. The attempt to issue a Feather Alert for my sister was denied, and it left my family feeling hopeless and devastated.

The Yurok MMIP investigator, who was also cross-deputized in Humbolt and Del Norte counties, also tried to intervene and was also denied. Thankfully, we did find my sister, but she was gone for far too long than needed to be, and we all experienced trauma as a result. I want you to ask yourself, what would you do if this was your sister, your grandmother, your daughter? What lengths would you go to ensure their safety?

I want you to take that same care you have for your family and use it to strengthen the law and provide law enforcement and our community the tools we need to end this crisis. Tribal law enforcement know their citizens. They are trauma-informed, and they need the ability to work directly with CHP to issue the alerts. We also need people in the county and CHP level who are trauma-informed, MMIP-informed, and know about tribal people. We should not be fighting these fights alone when we're in this crisis together. We need changes to the Feather Alert implementation because it's not the matter of when another native person is reported missing or endangered. It's a matter of when. Thank you.

Thank you so much and like to welcome Assemblymember Soria. Do you have any comments?

Thank you, Chairman Ramos, and thank you for the testimony and for being brave in sharing that. I had not comments, but more kind of questions, because I think the testimony really struck me in terms of what is happening in the implementation. So just a question in terms of who gets to decide if the missing person qualifies under the federal alert. Is it when you guys call to a dispatcher, or is it the law enforcement official?

And I know I'm joined too late, but I think what that reminds us is that probably we need more education and training, I think from the beginning to our dispatchers, to those that are taking the intake call to our law enforcement officials. But thank you again for sharing your testimony. I think we get to learn about how things get implemented after they're passed.

I think this situation was unique because it was in San Francisco in an urban setting, and my tribe is in a rural setting, and we have a great relationship with our local law enforcement, whereas I don't believe there's a federally recognized tribe in San Francisco to where they can be educated or have those relationships to build and know tribal people. So that was how it was unique to where as being from a rural tribe and trying to get a Feather Alert implemented by the local law enforcement in San Francisco was not effective for us. It was devastating.

Thank you so much, much, Taralyn, for your advocacy from day one in helping to get this bill moving originally. And thank you for coming here and giving your testimony firsthand experience of areas that we still need to continue to work on. So I want to thank you and thank you for your family.

We're going to move now into Panel 3: the Law Enforcement Perspective on Implementation of Feather Alert. We have Yurok Tribal Police Chief Greg O'Rourke, Humboldt County Sheriff and California State Sheriff's Association Tribal Liaison Sheriff Honsal, San Francisco Police Commissioner Cindy Elias, San Diego Sheriff's Department Sheriff Kelly Martinez, Los Angeles Police Department Commander Jay Mastick.

We're going to run out of chairs, so the order of speaking will be Yurok Police Chief Greg O'Rourke, Humboldt County Sheriff Honsal and San Francisco Police Commissioner Cindy Elias, San Diego Sheriff Department Sheriff Kelly Martinez, and fifth will be Los Angeles Police Department Commander Jay Mastick. And if others wanted to speak, please let me know. Thank you.

We heard the testimony early on from the Commissioner, CHP, Attorney General's Office, and then the enlightening voice of the Tribal perspective and then the firsthand experience of family involved in that. And we've heard some success stories, but we also hear that there has to be a lot more moving forward in building that respect.

And it is true, when Chairman James was talking about when someone is going through the checkbox of a Feather Alert, it means so much more to Indian people. For the first time in the state's history, have a Feather Alert that's supposed to move forward, and basically, in the eyes of a lot of people, solve the problem. But yet when there's roadblocks, when some are asking for it and it's denied without an explanation, then people revert back to how it's always been.

And what got us to this point. Again, California is number five of all the states in the nation of not investigating and not moving forward on missing and murdered Native American persons, Native American women. But it also continues to lead the way in a discussion, in trying to bring collaboration forward. We did hear that there is some great relationships within areas of the State of California, and we still know that there's strained relationships with local law enforcement and Tribal governments. How do we move forward?

There's been recommendations for us to look at as far as having a direct line to Commissioner and CHP, but we know that in some areas, local law enforcement are the first ones on scene that could provide vital information within that first 24-hour setting. So how do we move forward in looking at this? Certainly, we're here to move forward and to hear ideas of how we could better work together. Would it be some type of educational task force so that officers know or deputies know, Commissioner, CHP officers know that when you're going through that checkbox, every check is a part of history that you're unraveling peeling back that onion? So how do we move forward? And I want to thank you for being here. I mean, Sheriff Honsal, we've been out in Coyote Valley. We've been down in Fresno. We've been down in, I think in LA, down in those areas, trying to get the word out on the implementation of Feather Alert and the arsenal and the tool that's there.

So this hearing is meant to bring all that into perspective so that we could all work together and to path a course forward to ensure that the reason for this Bill is ultimately doing what it was implemented to do. And this is the first year that we're coming back and refining this Bill, and my colleagues are here to see that, right? We implemented a Bill, Feather Alert. We've seen it work. There was five cases that were requested. Two were implemented. Three were denied.

And again, when you use that word, denied, it means so much to California's first people. So a recommendation was reasons why it's denied, those types of issues. But we do know because of the statistics from the last panel that there is far more issues affecting California's first people that aren't even being reported. And that could center around mistrust in relationship building. So I want to turn this over and have our first speaker, Yurok Tribal Police Chief, Greg O'Rourke.

I agree. Greg O'Rourke. Good morning. Hello. My name is Greg O'Rourke, and I am the Tribal Police Chief for the Yurok Tribal Police Department. I'm humbled to be here. I'm humbled as a Yurok Tribal Member and a Native man to be able to be here and help advocate for my people and Native people up and down the state. And I'm also humbled as a law enforcement officer to be at a table with such influential people within my profession.

So thank you for including me on this. We've heard in prior testimony, when it comes to trauma and the impact on that. It took, however, generations of confusion, of anger, of hurt, of dysfunction within Native communities to finally identify and arrive at something that we can finally label trauma. And it took us as Native people to be hypercritical and introspective and look at us to see, and make that identification.

But now that we did that, dysfunction is no longer a source of shame and it's no longer a source of embarrassment or guilt. We can actually cling on to trauma and being trauma-informed and strategize how to deal with that. And so today, as law enforcement, we also need to look at ourselves and apply that same hypercritical introspection into how we can make this particular legislation more effective.

So one of the basic concepts in law enforcement that we learn very early on is the letter of the law versus the intent of the law. And I think that one of the things that has been really missing is the intent of this legislation.

The intent of the legislation is to provide law enforcement a tool so we can take an active role in stopping a crisis that's impacting people up and down the state and having a great impact on a community that has historically been underserved and disenfranchised from the state. A component of that is, at our level, understanding and embracing a trauma-informed approach to policing. Trauma-informed care is not a new concept. But yet within law enforcement circles, a trauma-informed policing approach is still new.

One of the things that I hear and I get frustrated about and I get angry about and please, I don't want to seem like I'm impugning any of my colleagues, because I know how tough this job is. And the CHP has a very powerful burden to be the ones to determine what meets criteria, especially when a family is grieving and scared, worried, that's a very powerful burden upon them.

But I think that we also did not do CHP a service by providing relevant training to an understanding of what's causing that trauma. We did not provide a trauma-informed policing approach to this. One of the principles--and principles don't change. Tactics change, practices change. Principles are foundation. They don't change. One of the principles of trauma-informed is to not re-traumatize the victim or the families.

But yet when a family who is scared hears from the CHP, the entity, who's the one gatekeeping this, that "your sister chooses to be missing." That is hurtful, it is harmful. And it not only re-traumatizes a family, it re-traumatizes an entire community and reinforces the mistrust that Native people have to law enforcement. That's not okay. That's not okay. Yurok Tribe did issue out a Feather Alert that was successful.

And some of the observations that I've seen from that Feather Alert were between my department's social media page, the Yurok Tribe's social media page, we had nearly 1000 shares of this Feather Alert. CHP were able to actually get over 2000 shares. That's impressive. And I think that what that does is it highlights that us, as Native people, we work together. Our country--Native country--is small, and we're not bound by jurisdictional confines like law enforcement is. We have sheriffs here from Southern California.

I guarantee you, I got relations in Riverside County. That's just me. Indian country is small. And so by seeing the amount of shares, really did highlight that there is a potential ally with the community--with Native community--to be able to help get that word out, if we could work together. But in order to work together, we have to be able to exemplify and Institute a trauma-informed policing approach to a community that has and is troubled with a historic and intergenerational trauma.

Just by nature of who we are and being born, it's instilled. That needs to be recognized at a professional level. One of the things that we see about Indian country and one of the things that we hear from CHP is they don't want to over inundate the community with alerts. But yet Indian country is small. Why do they get to make that determination for us?

I don't understand that. With the educational component for Feather Alert for the past year, and I've been fortunate enough to travel to different locations with the Assemblymember Ramos to be able to help educate. And so I have seen and heard CHP's presentation for what they can do with the alert system. And it is absolutely astounding. It is so impressive of what CHP can do, but I never heard what CHP will do.

And when you're presenting to a community of what you can do, that provides hope. That provides and tells a community that we finally have an ally that's willing to listen to us, but yet when that community goes to that same entity and asks for a Feather Alert and gets denied, that's not what they will do. Very different than what they can do. And it just, again, reinforces that. And so, again, I want to reemphasize that. I'm not here to impugn the work of law enforcement, my colleagues, it is a tough job, but we do have to get better. All of us have to get better. Part of that is, we heard testimony about local law enforcement and working with local law enforcement to be able to get a CHP enacted. But one of the things I find really interesting is out of 109 tribes in the state, about a third have a Tribal Police Department. But they're not local law enforcement because they're not codified or recognized anywhere in California statute as law enforcement.

So they're not considered law enforcement. And again, that systemic issue, just by the nature of the system, is telling native people who are exercising their inherent authority by implementing a Tribal Police Department to protect their citizenships, that they don't count. We don't count. That's not right. We were able to get victories like Feather Alert. We were able to get victories legislatively, like AB 44.

With AB 44, it really is going to open up an avenue for parity for tribes, because Tribal courts and Tribal police now will have access to MUPS, which is the California database for missing persons. We'll be able to actually access that through CLETS. But yet, we still need to be able to work with the CHP on Feather Alert. And so, in closing, to answer your question, Assemblymember, what can we do? You've heard testimony from family members, from Tribal advocates about the trauma within Native communities.

And we heard a recommendation from the AG's office about implementing trauma-informed approach to policing. And that needs to occur not only at this level. I feel fortunate enough to be able to sit at this table with, again, influential people within the profession, and they're here to make this change. But as a head of a department, I don't always know the day to day of what my officers are doing, and I'm a small department.

So not only at this level do we need to implement change and introduce trauma-informed policing, but also at that very basic level, at the police academy level, to be able to work with POST to include trauma-informed policing into a POST curriculum. And if we can get that on the state, then it's just not isolated to a single academy, then that means every single entity within the state that has a police academy will be required to teach trauma-informed.

And trauma-informed policing doesn't just necessarily impact Tribal communities, it impacts all communities of color, all disenfranchised communities, because we're all rooted in trauma. And having an understanding of the impacts of trauma in the community, how it manifests itself, and the impact of trauma within the individual and how that manifests itself is going to give us a better avenue to establish rapport and trust with the people in which we swore to serve and protect. And ultimately, that's what we as cops want. We want to be able to be there when they call. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chief O'Rourke. Next we'll hear from Humboldt County Sheriff and the State Sheriff's Association Tribal Liason, Sheriff Honsal.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember Ramos. Powerful testimony, Chief O'Rourke, I really appreciate your partnership and friendship, and I think it's important today what we're doing here. Are we moving the needle on this, right? A lot of steps have been made. I don't get to determine whether or not the needle is moving. You don't get to. It's our community that determines whether or not, that needle is moving. We are taking steps in the right direction.

But I think it's very important that we evaluate those steps to make sure that the community actually is seeing the difference out there. So this gives us an opportunity, and always an opportunity for reflection, as a law enforcement professional and sheriff, to see how we can do stuff better. I like to say that we're doing it 100% of the time, the best that we can do, but reality is that we're not.

And so it gives us an opportunity to make changes locally and also on the state level. So I do appreciate that. Some of the things that we've heard today and continuously hear today with DOJ and the CHP Commissioner is that they have the same mentality.

And we hear the CHP Commissioner say today, "those ones that are on the cusp, we're going to move those forward and we're going to make that determination, that we're going to err on the side of caution, so to speak, and push out that information." So I appreciate the Commissioner saying that. I appreciate Department of Justice looking at our DOJ missing persons form and how we collect data.

We see our numbers going the opposite way, but I think those numbers are going to continue to go the opposite way, Assemblymember, because our data is going to get better. We know that there's missing persons, Indigenous missing persons happening all throughout the state that are not documented correctly. So I think we have to look at that data a couple of different ways. That we're doing our job, getting out there, changing the form.

We are documenting whether or not someone has a travel affiliation and putting the ability to do multirace form checkbox there, so we can determine the Native American population that do turn missing, that they fit this criteria. So I think that's important aspect here. One of the things that we talked about as well is the Tribe's ability to reach directly out to CHP and to request a Feather Alert, and that's something that can be discussed.

But they also have to have the ability to take a missing person's investigation. And this Assembly had an opportunity with AB 44 to have Tribal police be certified under POST. And we missed that opportunity last year. And I know that that's something that's still pressing forward, but that can help in these circumstances.

Chief O'Rourke, Yurok Tribal Police is poised with all the right POST certifications that his and his department have, working as Reserve Deputy Sheriffs under the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and the Del Norte County Sheriff's Office. They're poised to be that model department that can do this. And I have faith, full faith, that they can do a great job for that. We're going to continue to do public education here throughout the state.

The state sheriffs are committed to providing public education to get out there and to know that this is a tool that we can use. We often say when we go out and we do neighborhood meetings, and that kind of stuff is we want people to report suspicious activity. It's part of their criteria here that when someone is missing under suspicious circumstances, that this is one of the elements that can be determined.

What's suspicious to you in your neighborhood may not be suspicious to me driving through your neighborhood. So we have to acknowledge that the Native American community and what they determine as suspicious is we have to take it as face value. We have to say this is suspicious. This is their reasoning. It may not be your reasoning or my reasoning, but as a law enforcement agency, I'm going to take their word for it that this is suspicious.

And I'm going to say that that is a valid criteria. So I think that's really important that we have to do. We have to provide CHP with a set of criteria because they're working within this criteria. It is subjective. So we have to provide. If you believe there needs to be a legislative fix and further define those things, then I would encourage that so CHP has really defined definitions for these.

One of the things that I want to do is I want to talk about a success story. And one of the first Feather Alerts that went out was out of Humboldt County, and it was a 34 year old Native American woman from the Bear River Tribe. Family called. She had a history of mental illness. I'm going to call her Mrs. C.

So Mrs. C had a history of drug abuse, mental illness, and also at a previous time where she vanished and then was found here in Sacramento in the burn ward. So the family was very, she checks in all the time. Then all of a sudden she went off the radar. They couldn't find her. They filed a missing person's report. Two weeks later, our missing person investigator called the family, said, hey, "has she reported?" No, she hasn't. We're very concerned. She hasn't cashed her checks.

She doesn't have a cell phone. Actually, her wallet was found up in Trinidad. There's all these suspicious circumstances. We're concerned. And our investigator said, well, there's this Feather Alert that we're going to try. We're going to try to push a Feather Alert out statewide so we can get her image, her name out there. She's in a missing person's database. So if any law enforcement contacts her, then they're going to have it flash up there. We did our due diligence. We worked with the Tribe.

We made sure that everything was done right. We contacted CHP, and it was the very first one. So we were working through some things. Thankfully, we did get it approved. Information went out in Northern California, and they approved it to be in Sacramento from that previous history. And two weeks after that, lo and behold, she was found in Folsom by CHP. So it does work. It does work.

And it also instills that trust in our communities out there, that we do care, we do hear, we do listen, and that we are going to pull out all stops under the law to make sure that information is shared properly so we can safely bring our loved ones home. I think that's all of my notes. So I really appreciate being here today, and I'm here to answer any questions later on. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Sheriff Honsal, for that. Next, we'll have San Francisco Police Commissioner Cindy Elias share with us.

Thank you. Thank you, Assemblyman Ramos, thank you so much for inviting me to participate in this important discussion and topic. Also, thank you for allowing me to be up here with my esteemed colleagues. I am not a police officer. My name is Cindy Elias. I'm the President of the San Francisco Police Commission. I'm a lawyer by trade, but as a Police Commissioner, I am responsible for creating policy and discipline for the San Francisco Police Department. So I come to you with a policy perspective, in terms of creating policy and making sure that it works. And from a policy perspective, it's important that it's clear, it's informative, and we have buy-in. I can wow you with words. I can impress you with my grammar, and I can make it look great on paper. But if it doesn't work by those that have to implement it, it means nothing.

And so when I go and I make policy, those are the things that I keep in mind to make sure that the people who have to go out day in, day in and night to make this policy work, it's functional, logistically, it works, and it's commonsensical. So those are things that we have to make sure that we keep in mind when we're making policy and writing policy for those to implement.

Another very, I think, important piece is buy-in from officers, or those that are implementing it. And what does that mean? We need to educate them, and we need to empower them with the tools they need in order to implement this policy on paper. And so that's really important. I think that in order for us to do that is one of the things that you've done, which is not only writing legislation, but making sure you come back and make sure it works.

And so from a policy perspective, that's important for us too, because we get a lot of complaints about, "oh, well, we have to track things or we have to collect data," but it's that data and that information that we collect that really helps us steer where we need to go in the future. One of the things you asked is, moving forward, how do we come up with solutions or make it better?

And I think that moving forward, collaboration is key, but not only with law enforcement partners, but with community. In San Francisco, we have the ability that when we write policy, we post it on the website, and community members, residents, police officers, anyone and everyone can view the policy before it's implemented and add their input. And it's important because we all come here with different perspectives and different backgrounds and different experiences.

And what may seem good to me on paper as a policymaker may not be functional for other law enforcement officials who have to implement it. And so I think that that's very, very important that we have that collaboration. Hearing the testimony today and educating myself, it seems that what's also important moving forward is that when we create this policy, and in San Francisco, the missing person policy is up for review. It was last reviewed in 1999.

So this is what guides our police officers day to day on how to handle these types of situations. And hearing from testimony, from his opinion and other ones, other individuals that have come before you today has informed me that there are two areas that we really need to address, which are subjectivity and allowing safeguards in the policy to ensure that when someone comes and makes a missing persons report, we address either conscious or unconscious bias that may exist.

We recognize the trauma that exists, generational trauma, and being trauma-informed, also to the cultural competence that really needs to be there in order to move this work forward.

Because I know what my loved one is like, and I know their tendencies as other people. But when I have to explain that to someone who has no knowledge of that person, or why you, as their loved one, feel like they're in danger, and you try to articulate that to the person who is going to ultimately decide whether or not they meet this criteria, that can be very frustrating and very traumatizing.

And as my colleagues have indicated, the goal is not to re-traumatize people, but to understand and how do we move forward. So I think that having that information in mind, having this education behind us, having this awareness really helps in terms of policy making and ensuring that when we create policy, we address some of these issues that have arisen.

I am told that the CHP portal that our department has with CHP is very effective in terms of being efficient and being able to check boxes and get the information exchanged between the agencies, works very well. So I'm happy to hear about that.

But I'm also happy to know that speaking with you and your staff, that you will be hopefully coming to San Francisco very soon to educate us on the Feather Alert and providing us more information so that we can move forward in terms of getting this important information out there. So thank you again for your time and invitation today.

Thank you so much. And it's true that a lot of Native American people do live in urban areas in the State of California. We're still battling with misconceptions for many in the state think that all Native American people live on Valley Indian Reservations or communities, but over 70% live within urban communities, rural communities in the State of California. So thank you for your testimony. And with that, San Diego is a high population area of Native Americans in that area. And so I want to welcome Sheriff Kelly Martinez to offer us some testimony.

Yeah, thank you, Assemblymember Ramos and Select Committee Members or Member. I appreciate being here today because we do have a large Native American population in San Diego County, 18 reservations in our region. And one thing that is unique to San Diego County that I've noticed as I've traveled not only around the country, but around the state, is that law enforcement and our Tribal communities, we work really well together. We communicate well together.

We hold numerous meetings and symposiums and opportunities for us to communicate with each other and train together. My department offers a Public Law 280 class that's given once or twice a year. There is cultural competency aspect to that training, and that is informed by our Tribal community members, as well as we have Tribal Court in the room, we invite our Tribal law enforcement to that training. It's not just law enforcement.

One thing that I do know about San Diego County, though, is that the sheriff's Department and Sheriff's Deputies are the ones who are most familiar with our Tribal communities. As you said, a lot of Tribal members do not live on the reservations. And so that leaves 18 cities in my jurisdiction. Police officers and deputies, fortunately work in nine of those cities, but the other nine do not have any touch-point or contact with Tribal communities.

So we work very hard to educate our local, state and federal partners. The US Attorney's Office has been amazing, as well as the District Attorney's Office in collaborating with us on that training to inform. We really leaned into this Feather Alert once this Bill passed, and I think we've done some great training in the region.

The couple of gaps that I've seen, as we've stated before, is that people don't always identify the missing person as Indigenous when they're reported, say, to Chula Vista Police Department or one of our other agencies. So knowing that it's an Indigenous person and that they may qualify for a Feather Alert is important for us. And that may be training the community as much as law enforcement to ask those questions or to lean into that, being a little bit more informed on what that might look like.

The other thing that I'm hearing today, and I really appreciate everyone's testimony, it's been very informative. But I would urge this Committee not to be too quick to implement a system of reporting directly to CHP. I think that would put more risk to the missing person.

I think we need to instead learn how to build that trust better, because the agency that's responsible for that missing person investigation, which potentially could be a criminal investigation, a kidnapping, human trafficking, drug trafficking, any number of other things up to homicide, really is not the Highway Patrol. And to muddy the waters, so to speak, in that investigation would put more risk to the person, more risk to an investigation, and more risk to a successful prosecution.

So I think we need to have more conversations surrounding that. I'm very supportive of our Tribal police law enforcement partners. Sycuan has been the gold standard in a lot of ways for Tribal law enforcement in the state. First ones to have CLETS access. I supported the Bill to provide more POST training or POST certification and things like that for Tribal police. So I think that's important.

We have two Tribal police departments in San Diego County that I would argue are just as proficient as any other law enforcement entity in the region. So to that end, the more that we can empower our Tribal police, I think that's a good thing.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And thank you for bringing up the PL 280 class. And I'll have a question on that once we get done with the testimony. Our next speaker, Los Angeles Police Department Commander Jay Mastick. We were down in that area, and we brought to light that California is home to more Native Americans than any other state in the nation, and close to 50% live within that area that you represent up here today.

And even that was eye-opening to some law enforcement officers in that area. We had, at this implementation, we had LA County Sheriffs and LA City Police there, and we brought that statistic forward, and it was kind of eye-opening for them. So we believe the identification, misclassification, those types of things, is something that we need to work on. But thank you for being here and thank you for offering testimony. Go ahead.

Thank you, Assemblymember Ramos. A few things to cover, and I think my prior law enforcement officials did cover it. Two challenges I see, I'm going to go into them just a little bit, are the classification of folks who are reported missing, as well as the criteria used for the Feather Alert. And I'll go into it with my example.

As Sheriff Martinez had indicated, the primary responsibility is the local law enforcement agency who's going to take that first radio call, accept that missing persons report, and hopefully locate them safely and return them to their family. The Feather Alert is a tool in a whole host of holistic, comprehensive strategies to ultimately locate that person. So as the Sheriff had mentioned, I don't think taking the local police out of that equation is necessarily the right strategy to do it.

I believe that strategy we have in place will prove to be effective. As you had indicated, LA is the home of a very large Native American community. We have 327 within LA County. I work for the City of Los Angeles. And just in terms of overall missings reported in LA County--missing persons--in 2023, we had 3825. In terms of Native Americans reported missing, we had five, two women and one man. In 2022, we had 3895, and six of those total were Native Americans, three men and three women. And then in 2021, we had 3723 total missings, with four Native Americans, three female and one male. In the course of 2023, we did make one of the one attempt to report one of our missing persons in the Feather Alert system. We were one of those three attempts that were denied.

But before casting too much criticism on the CHP, I'll work you through my example, and you'll see why it's not such a clear-cut issue. Our subject had come to Los Angeles for drug abuse rehabilitation and voluntarily signed themselves out, under no suspicious or unusual circumstances other than the substance abuse issue. Ultimately was reported missing to my Department on the 14th of December.

And in fact, in preparing to come here, I spoke with my investigator from missing persons, and I said, how did the entire thing go down? Why were we denied? So we walked through it, and the criteria was, the hold-up in this circumstance, and he said he pushed for it. He called the CHP, and he tried. But before I criticize him too much, the criteria to approve was unexplained or suspicious circumstances. And the scenario I just gave you, it's a judgment call.

It was a judgment call, was a judgment call by that CHP officer who took the call. So, suffering from addiction, substance abuse, but checked herself out under no unusual circumstances, no dangerous circumstances. It was a success story. It's kind of a mixed story between the Feather Alert. We did locate her safely a few, a week and a half later, and returned her to her family. But the total strategy to this is not--the Feather Alert is an effective tool, but it's not just the Feather Alert.

It is social media. It is the completion of that initial missing persons report. It is canvassing the area. It is getting word out. It is all those things that go along with it. And so social media was a piece of our strategy that ultimately was successful, despite having not been approved for the Feather Alert. I had indicated that classification and criteria--classification. The initial missing persons report, when it was initially completed, it was entered in the system as a white person.

So it wasn't after a second phone call to follow up to check off all these boxes, we determined it was a Native American and changed that missing person classification and reentered it into CLETS as a missing person. So I think those are the two big challenges moving forward. I think it's classification of the folks on the missing forum, education by law enforcement to know what to ask for. It's a community piece as well, as well as the criteria. And it's subjective.

So I don't want to be too harsh on the CHP. There's been a lot of criticism laid on the CHP this morning, but it's a police officer answering that phone, weighing through the criteria, that's not as clear cut as it seems, and it is subjective. So I do think the Feather Alert is an effective tool, especially when it gets approved and it's used, but everything doesn't. It's not all on Feather Alert, yes or no.

It's all on local police, who has the investigation, investigative strategies, resources applied to the problem. It rests on that. It's a bigger picture than just Feather Alert yes, no. And that's all I have. I'm certainly open to any questions you may have.

Well, thank you for that and for that testimony. Feather Alert is one tool. In that sense, the Feather Alert could be viewed as a last-case scenario because local law enforcement or the 911 call could come out. The whole hope is to get that individual, start that up, get them home before you have to implement the Feather Alert. But we also know that there's areas that we want to address and to look at. Not sure if Assemblymember Mathis had any questions before.

I think the biggest thing, it goes from it being subjective to assumptive. And what mechanism, as your testimony was. We can write the most beautiful laws in the books, but if the mechanics don't work, it's worth nothing, and.

How do we mechanically, in the policy, take it from subjective to assumptive? So when they're checking the boxes, whoever's checking them knows to assume this is going to go this direction because the sooner that's done, the sooner we know forces are implemented and going out to help. And so it's for me, where's that little part that clearly something needs to be checked, something needs to be fixed where they know in their minds that it's going to flick that switch.

Hey, check this box, which is going to open up the resources to go out and get the help that's needed. We see it all the time. And my question for all of you is that box is that thing that needs to be changed on the mechanics, is it a training element? What I mean by training too is also we do these things for say school shooting drills and other things where do we need to implement, there will be Feather Alert training drills.

Is it something that needs to be worked into it? Because that goes into that education side as well. So how do you make sure that when it happens, it's assumptive and it's going to be triggered and it's going to move? Because we're talking about saving lives. And so when it comes to life-saving, maybe it's because I was a lifeguard all through my teenage years and a combat guy forever and then now here.

But it's minutes and seconds count, so when we're talking about weeks and we know these things take time to track people down and find out what's going on. But the sooner we get that. The testimony that you shared was, it wasn't the first time, but we had to do a follow-up call and they go, oh, it's an indigenous person. You iron out the mistakes through training, but you also iron them out through the policies on what you're going to train on.

In the military, we worked on standard operating procedures and it was always, okay, how do we write the procedure better so we know and train the procedure better so we know when this happens, this is what we do. And you're always doing the after-action reviews, which is part of what we're doing here today to see where do we fix that little thing in the policy and how we train to do better. So back to you. And I saw the hand up here.

Yeah, I apologize. I was just reflecting as you were speaking that I think part of the question is the trauma-informed piece. And for us, from a law enforcement perspective, a lot of times the voluntariness of the missing act, right so I think that's part of our subjective decision-making is when we don't see anything unusual about someone checking out of rehab, but the family is concerned because of their past habits or how they may become gravely disabled based on their substance use disorder. So I don't have an answer today, but just adding that as maybe a little explanation.

Yeah, well, I think it's also the reality of, for the 911 dispatcher, they don't know anything that's going on. They don't know it's, well, here's my screen, here's my checkbox, and what am I going in? And the training that they have for what to do. And as we know from earlier testimony, the tribe is not always calling 911. They're calling the local enforcement, who's then making another phone call who's making another phone call. So you have two different directions. Information is coming in, and so it's how do we do better to make sure that information is moving faster?

One thing that comes to mind is perhaps having one of the criteria being based upon the caller making the report rather than the person receiving the report because as the caller, you're familiar with the history, the addiction, the trauma. And so if I'm telling you that I'm worried and this is why I'm calling because they're missing, then maybe that is efficient in terms of satisfying the criteria of whether the person is in dire strait or in harm's way or subject to injury versus the person receiving the call who's checking the boxes that says, okay, this is based on the example the commander gave. This is a person who left rehab, which may not have all of the information needed to make that decision, because based on the person's history and addiction and things that they've gone through. So perhaps adding a criteria based on the caller rather than the receiver.

Yeah, well, and it's one of those things where you got to kind of dissect the psychology of the call. Right? Does the person receiving the call know to ask? Does the person calling even know to say anything? We just went through this last year with a veteran suicide bill for calling 988. It's, well, how do we know if they're a veteran or not? We want to get the data. We want to get them help. But same thing here. How do we know they're indigenous or not?

Yeah, I think it's important question, but also when we push this information out and they turn out to be voluntarily missing, we're going to put all this effort together. We contact the individual, the deputy of the officer that contacts them determines that they're not a danger to themselves, not danger to others, they're not committing a crime.

We're going to take them out of the system and we're going to report back to the person who called and reported party and said, we've located them, they're fine, they don't want to be contacted. And that's the case. Then it's shut down at that point in time. And so whatever subjectivity may be here in the language, ultimately an officer is going to make the determination whoever contacts that individual that's reported missing, and it's going to be their determination at that point in time whether or not they have been located and they're okay. So there's just so much to go into this.

Well, that's the young rebellious adult takes off and wants to go through that part of life versus their. I understand that.

Hearing the questions come up in some of the dialogue afterwards, I think one of the things again, and I'll refer back to a trauma informed approach. We've seen a successful approach of trauma informed in other areas, domestic violence, sexual assault, those types of areas. And so with the impact that trauma has in native communities, really embracing and training advocates that can serve as a liaison between communities, families, and then law enforcement. One of the things that we as cops have to be very, very cautious of is making assumptions, because what if we assume wrong? And then that just diverted so much effort, resources, time, and attention towards an erroneous path. So one thing to look at, I think, is making use of advocates that can partner with law enforcement and communities.

Well, thank you for that. And I just want to welcome Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo here. And we're at the end of our panel and looking at the different questions. Do you have any comments or questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. While I was not here, I was watching from my office, the hearing, and the other panels. And I just want to thank you for continuing to do this work. I joined this committee when we first started, and the progress that has been made for this particular issue in particular, I think says a lot about the State of California, but also can certainly set a tone for the rest of the country as we move forward.

And so I just want to thank you and I want to give a special recognition and thanks to our LAPD Department that's here today as well. From being a Los Angeles member, we have a lot of indigenous folks as well in our community and unrecognized tribes. And so this is a bigger conversation, I think, in terms of the history of the United States, but also how we move forward. So I just want to thank you for your leadership, your commitment, and to all of the panelists that were here today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember. And San Diego Sheriff Martinez, you talked about Public Law 280 classes within your Department. Do you feel that that's helpful when dealing with tribal issues with so many 18 fully recognized tribes in your area?

Yeah, we've been doing this for about 15 years. I was a tribal liaison for former Sheriff Gore at one time. I've got a full-time tribal liaison, and then each of our captains or station commanders who are within a tribal area become a liaison to the tribes as well. But a lot of our deputies, myself included, had never been on an Indian reservation in their life. Even though I grew up in San Diego, I was born in San Diego.

Most of our communities outside of the tribes aren't even aware that we have 18 reservations in our county. So it's really important that the deputies who are working in those areas and the detectives and our child abuse detectives, homicide detectives. So we train anyone who touches tribal lands on our Department on Public Law 280 but also bring in representatives from the tribes and from tribal court and the DA's Office and the US Attorney's Office.

We have tribal police who are there as instructors and some of our other tribal leadership that come in and it really just explains a lot. And then we have a very robust training, bulletins and things like that. We have a website for tribal resources for our department members that also explains each reservation and the makeup of the tribe and how long their history and all of those things. So there's really a lot of information available to our deputies and we offer that we pay overtime for people to attend and anyone on our department can attend, but certainly anyone who's working on tribal lands has to attend.

Thank you for that. I know, Sheriff Honsal, you're the liaison with the Sheriff's Association, but have we reached a point to where Public Law 280 and the classes that might be that are taking place in San Diego could resonate throughout the whole State of California?

Absolutely. I think that's part of DOJ's mandate to make sure that Public Law 280 is a part of the training criteria and curriculum statewide. It is something that we've lacked. And so I believe working with Department of Justice, working with post, and also our tribal communities too, about Public Law 280 and the effect of that in each of the reservations is very, very important. Cultural competency in each county where reservation lies is really important as well. As just in general throughout the State of California, because not all counties have a reservation.

And it is important, and thank you for bringing that up and bringing the most important people to the table, the tribal people, as far as having that voice and publicity and those discussions that are there, we have to make sure that's first and foremost and building that relationship that's there. And that's dealing with county sheriffs that have recognized tribes, tribal governments, tribal communities in their jurisdiction, but get into the urban communities, cities of Los Angeles that might not even understand that component of it.

I think it actually would also be educational and needed in those areas, especially when we're starting to identify that over 70% of native people live outside of the reservation boundaries. So it'd be important to have that moving forward. But it also is important to hear from our first panel, the attorney general, and the commissioner, CHP, that we are working together to fine-tune the Feather Alert that is needed. And that's one tool that's there.

Certainly, the commissioner has stated that he's open to criticism, but also open to moving forward a road that could bring implementation and bringing safe loved ones back home. So we're going to continue to work to make sure out of this hearing where it is that we're headed. And of course, the Attorney General's Office making sure that they are on track to report back to this body on the findings that are there. And the victim services, I think is important.

The mental health component, we can't get away from that. And also, panel two, bringing to perspective the expectations of Indian country when this bill is moving forward. But yet when it's asked to be implemented, you're denied. And so when you're denied, it's not just a simple denial, it's a whole history of impact from the United States government, the State of California, that has inflicted California's first people.

So when you're talking and checking off those boxes, as Chairman Joe James alluded to, it's more than just checking a box. It's a history that we're trying to unlayer through all these different areas. But there is also the information that when there is declining of a Feather Alert, that there should be an explanation of why it's being declined. Certainly understanding that the Feather Alert is last worst-case scenario, and we want local law enforcement to start to investigate when they're called on that 911.

But also letting people understand tribal governments, understand why a Feather Alert was not implemented, and understanding from the commissioner that we're going to be looking at some of those areas there and hearing first family testimonies moving forward. But we have a long way to go trying to unlayer the relationship with the State of California, with California's first people, from the history onset, from different Spanish incursions to the Mexican rule, to ultimately the gold rush rule, to the State of California.

And we're still dealing with missing and murdered Native American people here at this panel, trying to bring it full circle, where you do have the commitment of the Legislature to relook at the Feather Alert, but also to hear from the voices of the tribal perspective and put that really at the forefront of the discussion and see how we all can work together to move forward.

It is going to take each and every one of us and topics on this panel and the panels prior to continue to work together to fine-tune this piece of legislation, to make amendments to ensure that the Feather Alert and the intent of it to bring safe people home from California's Native American population is doing exactly that. And that's why we wanted to have this hearing the first year after its implementation.

We do have work to do, but we need people at the table, voices from all the different panels that we're here today to continue to stay together so we could fine-tune a piece of legislation that meets the expectations of California's first people. Thank you for attending. We will move forward into public comment. Go ahead, sheriff.

Thank you. Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff. I want to kind of, I hope, summarize what has been said by everyone today and possibly even suggest a quick fix as a legislative body. I've never thought of this before, and I don't know where she went, but from the Police Commission about how you write something and maybe perfect on paper, but implementation, it doesn't work out the way that we wanted it to.

Riverside County, we are right behind San Diego for the largest amount of tribes in our county, and we have a fantastic relationship with our tribes as it relates to this. Last year, in 2023, we had three missing persons from tribal lands that did not meet the requirements. I mean, we went out, we investigated, we found them, but they didn't meet the requirements for what we consider a Feather Alert. And it was not called. We did not call a Highway Patrol.

We did one, and it was denied, similar to the Los Angeles police one. The difference in what we are all talking here today is, I think the failure of this legislation is it was a perfect bill, it was a perfect law, but it lumped it with the other alerts, and it's not the same. We can all say, I can tell you that if somebody that's 80 years old with dementia, that's a Silver Alert. It's a no-brainer. My child being missing and I don't know where my child is or who was kidnapped, we can all agree that that's what that is. This is not the same. And we lumped it into the same criteria with the same people handling it.

And I'm not going to criticize CHP, but the difference in this is these relationships that we are trying to build with our tribal communities and forge this trauma history that we are trying to get past. When there is a missing person on Indian land, and I'm on the phone with the tribal chair, and my deputy is at the home with the family getting the information, the CHP officer on the other end of that line has no personal buy into that.

He doesn't care that I'm on the phone with the tribal chair. He doesn't care. And listen to. He does care. He's not listening to the family saying that there is something wrong. And whether it was the LAPD case or our case, you're talking about law enforcement officers that are investigating these missing person crimes, and we are calling to implement a Feather Alert, and we are denied. That astounds me.

Now, I'm not going to say it's unique to the Feather Alert, because we have had Amber Alerts denied. Sometimes it comes back to the argument, and it was said today about we don't want to inundate people with it. Maybe the problem is we're not inundating them with the truth. And if we would report, why do we get to decide that one person's Feather Alert was good enough to broadcast, but another person's wasn't? And no different than any of the other alerts.

But for this particular case, let's really even put it in perspective. There was only three. Three, had we done those Feather Alerts? Does that really inundate the system? Are people really tone-deaf to that? It's only three. I can tell you, and I guarantee you, all of you are the same. We're sitting here with our phones, and we drive around with our phones, and while we're driving, and we all get the same tone when those things go off. Nobody's ignoring it.

We all look down, we all look for a license plate, or we all look for a description. And I guarantee you, you all look around to see if you found that car or do you recognize the person. We all do it. And I think for this particular Feather Alert system, I think that the legislative fix would be more of a shall that wording enter it into the system when called by law enforcement. Because we are the ones that are actually doing it.

And I have to emphasize that it is a tool. We are doing everything else in our power to locate those individuals, and we have come to the conclusion that now we have to use this other tool. We're not jumping to it first. We're not getting that call of a missing person and saying, oh my gosh, we need to make a Feather Alert right this second. We're going to do everything we can to locate them quickly, make sure they're missing, make sure.

Can we do this relatively quickly or do we need more help? And when we have decided as a law enforcement agency that we need more help, that's the purpose of the Feather Alert system. So it is a perfect system, and I'm not criticizing CHP for it. I think that it was labeled with the wrong group, that we treated it the same as those others, instead of putting the human element into it, of seeing what the intent of the legislation was for, and handling it separate. So thank you.

Thank you, Sheriff Bianco, for that testimony. And there is nods up here as far as that word shall implement. But working together with all partners in the state, we need to make sure that we're continuing to build that collaboration. But thank you for that testimony. Our next public speaker.

Hi, everyone. My name is Juay Roybal-Kastl. My traditional name is Oyate Wiwa Wu Shuiwa. I come from the Osage, the Absentee Shawnee, and the Muskogee Creek people, but I'm what you call an urban Indian. I've been raised in Los Angeles. However, I have roots here to Sacramento. My father is Richard Dean Kastl. My mother is Rose Marie Roybal. My mother was the first Chicana in the White House, and she worked with Reagan as his right hand. And this was in the 70s.

And I say this to preface I come from a family where my daughter was abducted also while we lived in LA. My daughter was blessed to get away. She fought two people and got away. And now my baby's a sergeant in the army, and she drives tanks, too. She's a tanker and a gunner. I also come from family. On my mother's side, the Garcia's were marshals. I come from the family.

If y'all have seen the Killer of the Flower Moon recently with Leonardo DiCaprio and all the awards it's getting, that's an MMIW situation. That's an MMIP situation. They're still hunting us today. Your policies and everything have already been written by what happened to the Osage people. It's on-screen for you if you'll just watch and see the length the people will go to kill us. They will put things in our drink. They will entice us, they will take us. Because for a lot of the tribal people, as soon as somebody says, oh, you're Native American, you get a casino, you get casino money. The rumor is the southern ones down in Riverside County get about 500,000 a month.

Let's stay on topic.

I'm staying on topic because this is why the MMIP people go missing, because they're hunting us as Indian people. So I say all this to say that I appreciate you all coming here and doing this. My brother was found dead in the Sacramento River. I had to come look for him. There was no Feather Alert at that time. When my daughter went missing in the streets of LA, I had to go looking for her. The community had to go looking for her.

When our relatives on the Osage reservation went missing, they called and they pleaded to the FBI for help. And that's how the FBI was formed. We're pleading for help today here in California, and it can't be based on trainings and policies, because our people may not be there tomorrow after you get your trainings and policies in place. My baby was lucky to get away. My brother wasn't. And that's why I wear this on my head. So thank you for letting me speak today.

You got it. Thank you so much. Any other public comment? Commissioner.

I don't know if I'll have another opportunity just to address the group in this forum. But I just want to say I don't take offense to the criticism. We welcome the criticism, and our goal is to get better. And I agree with the comments made by many. And then the commitment for me is the things that I do believe. We could tweak the law a little to make it better, but there's some things we could do internally, especially on the subjective itemsa, to share Bianco's point.

If the law enforcement officer that's present is making that request, and we have somebody insulated making that denial, I'm not okay with that. And I just want to share that publicly. And we'll go back and make some changes and then commit to working with you to tighten up the law a little. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Commissioner, and thank you to everyone for your testimony and bringing attention to this. And it's true. I mean, we continue to move the State of California forward and here in 2024 we're still dealing with this issue of bringing it to light when past histories, past injustices and lives have been lost here in Indian country and those that haven't even been reported.

So we do have to move forward with fine-tuning this piece of legislation, hearing from the voices and the testimony and the public comment to show the stress that's out there within Indian country and that voice is being heard and we're trying to move forward certainly being in this seat as a Serrano Cahuilla person, Indian person, we are pushing the envelope on a lot of these issues but it has taken over 170 years to get us to this point.

So this current Legislature is open to looking at these areas, amending this piece of legislation so it does move forward and serve its purpose of protecting California's first people. Thank you all for attending. With the panelists, would you make your way up here so we could get a picture real quick?