Navajo Nation's understaffed criminal investigators are also having to do a medical examiner's job

When crimes are committed on the Navajo Nation, officials have to look elsewhere for a medical examiner. That’s because the nation’s Department of Criminal Investigations doesn’t have one, instead relying on outside agencies or other workers to do the job.

Arizona State University student Ellis Preston, health disparities reporter for Cronkite News, has written about this. Preston joined The Show to talk about it.

Indigenous Affairs

Navajo Nation doesn't have a medical examiner. That’s hindering MMIP cases

Ellis Preston, Cronkite News

The Navajo Nation Department of Criminal Investigations does not have an on-site medical examiner, forcing criminal investigators to take on duties they are not properly trained for and slowing down murdered and missing Indigenous persons investigations.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Ellis, the Navajo Nation just doesn't have a medical examiner of its own?

ELLIS PRESTON: No, they don't. So, they have never had a medical examiner on staff. And eight years ago, they created a resolution in 2018 ... and it created the position for a medical examiner in that department, but it never got filled, because they don't have enough money for it.

MARK BRODIE: Do they not have enough money like at all, or just not enough money to recruit somebody to do the job?

ELLIS PRESTON: Well, I mean, the Navajo Nation does not have a lot of money. It does not have a lot of resources. But they rely a lot on Indian Health Services to like federally grant them money, and so they've been kind of advocating since they created this position to subsidize the cost of a medical examiner. Because they have some money for it, but not enough to pay a competitive wage for someone.

MARK BRODIE: So who is doing the job a medical examiner would do in the absence of somebody actually in that post?

ELLIS PRESTON: So they outsource. One of the medical examination offices that they go to is the Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office. But they also have had to start relying on some of their onsite criminal investigators that work for Navajo Nation, who are also already understaffed.

I spoke to Dale West. He's the supervisor of the Shiprock, New Mexico, department of criminal investigators, for the Navajo Nation Department of Criminal Investigations. ... But he said that they had eight people on staff and now they're down to three. And so these criminal investigators who are there to see who did a crime and if there is a crime are now having to do some work of medical examiners as well.

MARK BRODIE: Are they trained to do that?

ELLIS PRESTON: They've had to get training. ... When I was talking to Dale, he was saying that they've they've had to do a little bit of training, but it's obviously it's not their role. And they need to separate the roles because if everyone is doing what they're paid to do, then things will go a lot more smoothly, they'll be more efficient, and there's less room for mistakes. And especially for missing and murdered Indigenous people's cases, you want to make sure that you're flagging things accurately. And sometimes there's a death and you want to make sure that if it is a homicide, that that's flagged as quickly as possible so they can investigate.

So a medical examiner is responsible for finding like the cause, manner of death, creating death certificates, looking for evidence at the scene, doing autopsies, identifying missing person remains. And then a criminal investigator looks at like the crime, they're law enforcement, they're looking for who may be responsible for something.

MARK BRODIE: What are some of the the main implications of this job not being filled? You mentioned, you know, there's been obviously a lot of attention on missing and murdered Indigenous people, especially missing and murdered Indigenous women. What does it mean for those cases to not have a medical examiner in this pretty high-profile office?

ELLIS PRESTON: Yeah, so, it's definitely a big issue, homicides on tribal land. I actually tried to find a little bit of statistics, but there's not a ton of research on it just because a lot of nations can't necessarily like afford to conduct this sort of research.

But something recently that I found was that the CDC recently reported in 2023 that homicide was the fourth-leading cause of death among 1- to 44-year-old American Indian and Alaska Native males and the sixth-leading cause for women. So, it's very prevalent in their community, and it's very essential that all of these roles are just filled to be as accurate as possible.

... I think things get pretty convoluted from people that I've talked to who do outsourcing work. Like, I talked to this woman, Heather Edgar. She's a forensic anthropologist. So she doesn't do what a medical examiner does, she doesn't do what a criminal investigator does. She deals with like remains of bodies that are really deteriorated so she can identify that, and she has worked with the nation in an outsourced way.

And she says sometimes when she gets things back from them, photos are maybe blurry and they don't have all the details of a case. And if they had proper staffing, proper funding, things would maybe be easier for just all parties involved.

MARK BRODIE: Things get lost.

ELLIS PRESTON: Yes, yes, 100%.

MARK BRODIE: So what do folks on the Navajo Nation say about what they're doing to try to get the money to be able to hire someone?

ELLIS PRESTON: So there's the Navajo Nation Law and Order Committee, part of the Navajo Nation Council, and they've been trying to work with Indian Health Services since this resolution for a medical examiner was created in 2018. And they've been trying to kind of advocate to subsidize the cost for a competitive wage of a medical examiner.

But Indian Health Services hasn't been very reciprocative towards them. According to the Law and Order Committee, they maybe have been avoiding some meetings and not they haven't made it clear that they're willing to fund the position at all.

And they've also stated before that there's not enough on-site death counts or in-facility death counts to warrant the need for a medical examiner for the Navajo Nation. But that can get convoluted, too, because in-facility death counts means death counts in a hospital, so that's not counting like people who were found dead or went missing.

MARK BRODIE: It's very — people who died in a very specific place.

ELLIS PRESTON: Yes, and that's how they are kind of counting whether or not there should be a medical examiner for the Navajo Nation.

MARK BRODIE: Were you able to get a hold of anyone at IHS to ask what's going on?

ELLIS PRESTON: No. I did hear back from them, but they they didn't really respond to my request for comment. They just referred me to a different branch of Navajo Nation.

MARK BRODIE: So does it seem safe to say then that, at least for the immediate future, the status quo will be what happens? Like, there just will not be a medical examiner for the Navajo Nation?

ELLIS PRESTON: Yeah, for the future, and as far as I'm aware, they're going to keep advocating. They're trying to develop a 638 contract with the Indian Health Services. A 638 contract is a contract that allows tribes to operate federally funded programs independently, so they'll get money for a program and then they can operate it however they want.

So they want to create that with the IHS, so the IHS will fund this medical examiner, but Navajo Nation is responsible for like hiring them and actually creating the position. They're trying to work with them to create that, but yeah, no progress has been made, as for the foreseeable future, we don't know yet.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Ellis Preston, health disparities reporter with Cronkite News. Ellis, thanks so much.

ELLIS PRESTON: Thank you so much.

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