N.M. pair testify on missing, murdered Native women
One story involved a New Mexico mother who slowly came to the realization her 11-year-old daughter, abducted at the school bus stop, was not coming home.
Another involved a Baltimore father working through layer after layer of frustration to get local police agencies to act on his pregnant daughter’s disappearance.
And several expressed a sense of disappointment the media does not do more to spotlight these stories — stories of murdered and missing women, most of whom are women of color, including Native Americans.
“I have problems with what I don’t see in the news,” said Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Democrat who serves on the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, after hearing victims and advocates testify Thursday in Washington, D.C.
He said news outlets often don’t stay on top of these stories to provide a “scope” of continuity.
Two women from New Mexico were among those who testified: Pamela Foster, whose 11-yearold daughter Ashlynn Mike was abducted, assaulted and murdered on the Navajo Nation in 2016, and Angel Charley, executive director for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.
The issue has generated legislative initiatives in New Mexico with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently signing two bills into law to address the problem.
Senate Bill 12 creates a position in the Attorney General’s Office for a specialist who will work with law enforcement on cases involving missing Indigenous people. Senate Bill 13 will lead to the creation of a Missing in New Mexico event to help support residents with missing relatives by allowing them to file and update missing person reports, meet with investigators and submit DNA records.
Such measures are needed to give family members and friends a sense of hope and belief that someone is willing to help, advocates say.
Foster spoke of her frustration of trying to work through the sometimes-tangled layers of tribal and nontribal jurisdictional policies to get law enforcement agencies to do something quickly at a time when tribal entities did not issue Amber Alerts.
“I was in a cry for help [mode] at that time when I needed help, and there was none,” she told committee members.
Referring to statistics some committee members cited as evidence women of color are more likely to be disproportionally victims of abduction, assault and murder than white women, Charley asked: “Why are our lives not valued? Why are we invisible?”
Congressmen referred to the problem as a crisis happening right before our eyes, yet still invisible. Foster said it’s an issue that lawmakers must get involved with in order to make a difference.
She and other advocates named a number of measures that can be taken to alleviate the problem, including offering more educational opportunities for the disadvantaged; providing more resources to women and children looking to flee violence at home; and putting more funding and resources into “multiyear investigations,” as Charley put it.
Several urged media outlets to spotlight the cases of missing Indigenous women.
Charley said she knows of at least two cases in New Mexico where parents of children who went missing said law enforcement officials urged them not to talk to the media about the situation.
Sometimes, she said, only the media can help in providing a sense of closure and hope.
Natalie Wilson, founder of the nonprofit Black and Missing Foundation in Maryland, said usually it is law enforcement officials who first reach out to the media for aid in locating a missing person.
“We all have a responsibility [to do that],” Wilson said. “But if the community isn’t aware that someone is missing, then they are not looking for them. They normally hear about these cases through the media.”