NORTH DAKOTA (KXNET) — For centuries, a crisis has raged across the continent, impacting the lives of America’s most vulnerable.

And yet the cries of hundreds of thousands of people are met with deafening silence, leaving the problem underestimated, unrecognized and hidden.

Until today, KX News addresses the grief and resilience of Native American communities affected by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) crisis to show that the problem is not a cultural one.

As KX News’ Paige Gilmar shows us in our first series on Native American Heritage, it’s a human issue for all of us.

Across the estimated 326 tribal territories in the United States, a resounding sentiment is shaking tribes to their core, and that is — simply put — enough is enough.

“It’s time. It’s long past time that we really start working on these issues. And we need leaders who care enough to address these issues. It’s not normal. It’s not okay. It’s not the status quo. It’s not the culture. We have to do better, and we want to do better,” said Native Inc. CEO and Founder Lorraine Davis.

Since the first instances of colonization in the Americas, indigenous communities have suffered disproportionately high rates of attacks, kidnappings, and murders of their tribe members. This “Old World problem” continues to haunt our modern society with terrifying statistics and details. But what has been done about it?

“We’re still suffering, and nothing is being done. This hits us in the heart. We as Native women, we as Native mothers and fathers, we have to make a difference. We have to raise our voices,” said Amber Warman, the domestic violence advocate and coordinator at Native Inc. “My cousin was murdered a few years ago in Akron, Ohio by his girlfriend. So he was Native; she was non-Native. There was no real investigation. They were using drugs and alcohol, and so there was no investigation.”

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Native women are murdered at a rate ten times higher than the national average.

According to the CDC, Native men have the second highest murder rate compared to other races.

Four out of five indigenous women, or almost 80% of indigenous women, will experience violence in their lifetime.

However, there is still no research on the impact of the high violence and murder rates on indigenous women living in urban areas. However, recent data shows that 71% of all indigenous people live in cities, and not on tribal lands.

“What we’re talking about here really hits me hard because my father almost killed me multiple times. I was strangled as a child, so when I think about what women have gone through, I’ve been through this myself, and it’s not easy,” Warman explained.

But indigenous communities are threatened by murder as much as by disappearances.

According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there are approximately 1,500 missing Native Americans listed in the National Crime Information Center database.

However, there are still 4,200 cases of missing and murdered Indians that remain unsolved.

Yet reports indicate that there is no reliable count of the number of missing or murdered Native Americans, as police often misclassify the bodies as being of a race other than Native American.

Despite this shockwave of data, Indigenous communities say this crisis receives little media attention and that cases are often mishandled by law enforcement, especially when other missing persons cases receive more attention.

“Sometimes I think it’s the skin color. I hate to say it, but in some of these cases they’re a little lighter in skin color than we are,” explained Scott Davis, the former commissioner of North Dakota Indian Affairs.

As more Indigenous people give voice to a silent crisis, non-Indigenous people wonder why this problem continues to persist with such ferocious force. But for Indigenous people, the answer is simple: it starts with trauma.

“We’ve always heard that hurt people hurt other people, and so in that case we need to address the trauma so that this vicious cycle stops,” Lorraine said.

Based on centuries of historical abuses such as massacres, oppression, boarding schools and more, there is a collective trauma within Native American communities that creates a vicious cycle of substance abuse, violence and mental illness, all of which then feeds the MMIP pipeline.

As Scott Davis notes, tribal areas are ill-equipped to deal with this, often due to unrealistic state laws that, for example, set requirements for the number of hospital beds that can be included in inpatient care.

Substance abuse problems are exacerbated by the fact that drug cartels and dealers often set up shop on tribal lands to circumvent state laws, as these lands are subject to tribal law.

Directly related to MMIP, there is simply not enough tribal law enforcement to handle the number of missing persons and homicide cases they receive, even when they cooperate with federal law enforcement when these cases fall under their jurisdiction.

“I’m a big believer that we need more law enforcement. Law enforcement is understaffed and underfunded, and that makes it hard to get the proper training that they need when they’re in survival mode themselves. They’re waking up at 6 a.m. every day and working a 12-hour shift. They don’t know if they have backup, they don’t know if their resources are going to be met,” Warman explained.

But a problem as old as the road to success has a simple solution. And it all starts with solidarity and cooperation.

“I’ve been scratching my head for years about how do we curb this. How do we stop this without impeding tribal sovereignty, you know? Well, the tribes have to decide, leaders have to decide to allow the state to come in, to allow the resources to come in and patrol, to investigate along with tribal law enforcement. That’s all we’re saying. That’s all we’ve ever said,” Scott said.

In this way, the indigenous people can move the monolith to a better and brighter future.

Lorraine Davis’ nonprofit organizations, Native Inc. and the Native Development Center, provide assistance to Native Americans dealing with unemployment, domestic violence and sexual abuse, homelessness, health issues and more.