Indigenous people raise awareness about their missing and murdered

Indigenous people across North America are calling this week for sustained responses to the violence in their communities, much of it against women and girls.

In prayer walks, self-defense classes, marches and speeches at state capitols, they are pushing for better cooperation among law enforcement agencies to find missing people and solve homicides that are among about 4,300 open FBI cases this year.

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Some parents say they will use Monday’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day to make sure children understand what’s at stake.

Many young women are covering their mouths with bright red handprints, vowing to speak for those who have been silenced. According to the U.S. Justice Department, Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to be victims of homicide than the national average.

What ‘the talk’ means to Indigenous people

Lisa Mulligan, of the Forest County Potawatomi, carries this message when she rides her motorcycle from Wisconsin to rallies out West. She plans to give her two granddaughters “the talk” as they grow older about what they statistically might encounter in their lives.

She will warn them that her father was killed and another relative was a victim of sex trafficking.

“That’s why I ride for it,” Milligan said. “I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

Christina Castro, of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, has a 12-year-old daughter. Navajo Nation citizen Joylana Begay-Kroupa has a 10-year-old son. They also have shared anguished reality checks, hoping to protect their children and foster change.

“Indigenous people don’t have the luxury about NOT talking to our daughters about violence against girls. I’ve had to talk with my daughter since birth about bodily autonomy,” said Castro, who co-founded the advocacy organization 3 Sisters Collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The collective is hosting self-defense training and speeches at the Arizona capitol, and showing part of the documentary “She Cried That Day,” about the 2015 unresolved death of Dione Thomas, a Navajo woman.

Self-defense classes also will start soon at the Phoenix Indian Center, a social services hub for Indigenous people.

“I always go into auntie mode. You automatically want to protect your nieces and your nephews and your children,” said Begay-Kroupa, the center’s chief executive. “Unfortunately in Indigenous communities, we’ve seen this type of suffering occur over and over again.”

She said she doesn’t hold back information when speaking with her young son.

“We have relatives that have gone missing, and we just don’t know where they’re at,” Begay-Kroupa said. “He wants to understand why, where’d they go and what happened to them.”

Yaretzi Ortega, a 15-year-old from the Gila River Indian Community who wore the red handprint Saturday, said Native Americans need to speak up every day. It’s a message she understood when she too got “the talk.”

“People need to be aware at a young age because it could happen to them,” Ortega said. “‘The talk’ is an acknowledgment of how Native American women and children have often been targeted. They have to be aware of the risks.”

Indigenous men aren’t immune. Donovan Paddock, who joined an awareness walk Friday in Scottsdale, Arizona, said two of his uncles were killed. His grandfather Layton Paddock Sr., a Navajo Code Talker, was found dead months after going missing in Winslow.

“My passion now is to help those that can’t find their loved ones,” Paddock said.

Years of advocacy have produced slow results

Some tribes have invited federal teams to lead simulation exercises showing what to do if someone goes missing.

Fully implementing Indigenous Alerts as part of state AMBER Alert systems will require more resources and coordination with the 574 federally recognized tribes, Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty said.

Tribal alerts only recently became eligible for federal funding, and tribes had to lobby the Federal Communications Commission before Apple upgraded iPhones to accept them, Crotty said.

Pamela Foster, a Navajo woman, has been a strong advocate since the delayed response to the 2016 kidnapping and murder of her daughter, Ashlynne Mike. Several years later, 76% of the tribes responding to a survey said they were participating in state alerts, but some state coordinators said they still didn’t even have tribal contact information.

The Trump administration in April announced a surge of FBI resources to 10 field offices to help the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Missing and Murdered Unit and tribal police prepare cases for prosecution.

The 2023 “Not One More” recommendations commissioned by Congress no longer appears on the Justice Department website, but still can be seen at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. In it, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland noted over 84% of Native American men and women experience violence in their lifetimes.

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Associated Press journalist Matt York in Scottsdale, Arizona, contributed to this report.