Tribe sounds alert on human trafficking

Human trafficking is not an issue that’s limited to the United States border with Mexico or in major metropolitan cities.

That’s a point that officials with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is trying to make, starting with an event at Menominee Casino Resort put on Jan. 18 by the tribe’s advocacy support services program to honor and remember victims of human trafficking. Tribal police and agencies like Safe Haven in Shawano were on hand to meet with people and explain how human trafficking can take place even in rural and isolated areas of the United States.

According to Michelle Frechette, advocacy support director, the tribe received a grant through the Wisconsin Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force to get the word out about the realities of human trafficking versus the myths many people believe.

“The community’s version of human trafficking is kind of old,” Frechette said, citing as examples: “It only happens at the border. It’s only kids and white vans. That’s not a true picture of what it looks like.”

Frechette hopes to educate the community, but also the agencies that serve the community, and that includes the resort. Being part of the hospitality industry, the resort deals with visitors and people traveling all the time, so it’s important for employees to be able to see the signs that someone is being abused or trafficked and refer potential victims to support services.

“It is a newer concept in our rural communities, and that can be a bit of a challenge,” Frechette said. “Sometimes, it gets mislabeled as prostitution or MMIP (missing and murdered Indigenous people). People interchange those terms, and they think, ‘Oh, it’s MMIP.’”

Frechette noted that she used to work for the Menominee Indian School District, and years ago, the district didn’t know what to do as far as referring suspected human trafficking activity. That’s why education about the issue is important, she said.

To that end, advocacy support services is working on a two-part training session on Feb. 15 at the resort, involving casino employees and the tribe’s victim advocacy employees that looks at human trafficking and how it’s particularly relevant on tribal reservations. Paula Wojtkowski, co-founder for Unapologetically Rez, will be the keynote speaker and explain how human trafficking and casinos interconnect.

The tribe plans to follow up with another training session on April 25, where participants will work on creating a protocol that they follow once they see indications of human trafficking.

“Obviously, casinos and hotels are a big red flag,” Frechette said. “If a casino runs into a suspected trafficking issue, they’ll know what to do and who to call.”

Human trafficking, in many cases, intertwines with the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people, where many Native American tragedies go unsolved or unsettled, but Frechette noted that the two are not exclusively linked.

“Oftentimes, there are MMIP cases that are not human trafficking, or there’s trafficking cases that do not go to MMIP results,” she said. “It’s important that we have partners like law enforcement and family services so that they understand what we’re looking for.”

There are some common risk factors for human trafficking, such as drug or alcohol addiction, an unstable living situation or being a runaway, to name a few, but Frechette noted that such factors cannot, by themselves, be clear evidence that trafficking is taking place.

“It’s a combination of all of these,” Frechette said.

April Patterson, outreach specialist for advocacy support services, has reached out to other tribes like the Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi and Lac de Flambeau in order to form a network of awareness so that it’s not just one tribal agency watching for human trafficking.

“A lot of the response I have gotten from the community is that they have very little knowledge about it or no idea it exists — or they know a lot,” Patterson said.

She noted that people with a lack of information base their perceptions on media portrayals, which means she needs to work particularly hard on educating them on what human trafficking really is.

“It could be the uncle that’s giving your kids stuff and then wanting more out of that relationship with the children,” Patterson said. “A lot of the time, it could be someone posing as a boyfriend.”

While the Jan. 18 event was a way to make the community aware of human trafficking, Patterson hopes to eventually have something larger for residents as a whole to make sure anyone can be the eyes and ears of the tribe as they try to prevent their members from becoming victims.

“I’ve had some people reach out, and I’ve had a few referrals,” Patterson said when asked about potential trafficking cases on the Menominee Reservation. “The biggest problem with trafficking is that people don’t self-identify as being trafficked. They’ll identify as being in a domestic violence situation or they’ve been sexually assaulted, but as we get information out there, they’re learning more about putting the signs together.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com