Navajo woman’s boyfriend to be sentenced for her murder

PHOENIX — The boyfriend of a Navajo woman whose killing has become representative of an international movement seeking to end an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women was scheduled to appear in court Monday afternoon to be sentenced on a first-degree murder charge.

Tre C. James was convicted last fall in federal court in Phoenix of the murder of Jamie Yazzie. The jury at the time also found James guilty of multiple counts of domestic violence against three former partners.

Yazzie was 32 and the mother of three sons when she disappeared in the summer of 2019 from her community of Pinon on the Navajo Nation. Despite a highly publicized search, her remains were not found until November 2021 on the nearby Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona.

Many of Yazzie’s friends and family members, including his mother, father, grandmother and other relatives, attended James’ seven-day trial.

Yazzie’s case gained attention through the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women grassroots movement, which draws attention to widespread violence against Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs calls violence against Native women a crisis.

Women in American Indian and Alaska Native communities have long suffered high rates of assault, kidnapping, and murder. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five (84%) American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56% who experienced sexual violence.