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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – In the three months since 62-year-old Navajo carpet weaver Ella Mae Begay went missing, haunted unanswered questions sometimes threaten to overwhelm her niece.
Seraphine Warren has organized searches of the vast Navajo Nation landscape near her aunt’s home in Arizona, but her money is running out to pay for gas and food for the volunteers.
“Why is it taking so long? Why are our prayers not being answered?”
Begay is one of thousands of indigenous women who have disappeared in the United States.
The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old white woman who went missing last month while traveling overland with her boyfriend in Wyoming, has caused a stir on traditional and social media, drawing new attention to a well-known phenomenon known as the “Missing White Woman.” Syndrome”.
Many families and lawyers for missing colored people are glad that the attention paid to Petito’s disappearance helped uncover clues likely to lead to the tragic discovery of her body and grieve with their family. However, some also wonder why the public spotlight that is so important in finding missing people has shrouded other cases in uncertainty.
“I would have loved to have had this quick rush to find my aunt faster. That’s all I want, ”said Warren, who lives in Utah, one of several states that Petito and his friend Brian Laundrie went through.
In Wyoming, where Petito was found, only 18% of missing Indigenous women cases have been covered in the media in the past decade, according to a state report released in January.
“Someone goes missing almost every day … from a tribal community,” said Lynnette Gray Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota and Northern Arapaho and director of Not Our Native Daughters. More than 700 indigenous people disappeared in Wyoming between 2011 and 2020, and about 20% of those cases were still unsolved after a month. That’s roughly double the rate in the white population, the report said.
One factor that helped people connect with Petito’s case was her Instagram profile, where she lived her dream of traveling the country. Other social media users contributed their own leads, including a traveling couple who said they spotted the couple’s white van in their own YouTube footage.
While authorities haven’t confirmed the video led to the discovery, the vast open spaces of the American West can fool search parties for years, and anything narrowing the search grid is welcome. Public pressure can also ensure that the authorities give priority to a case.
However, the opportunity to create a well-curated social media profile isn’t open to everyone, said Leah Salgado, assistant director of IllumiNative, a Native women-run social justice organization.
“Much of what is important to us and what is important to us is curated in such a way that people of color, and especially blacks and indigenous people, are disadvantaged,” she said.
The causes are complex, but an implicit bias in favor of whiteness and conventional standards of beauty plays a role, along with a lack of diversity in the newsroom and police decisions about where cases should be prosecuted, said Carol Liebler, communications professor at Syracuse’s Newhouse School University.
“What is being communicated is that white life is more important than people of color,” she said.
A sample of 247 missing teenagers in New York and California found that 34% of white teenage cases were covered by the media, compared with just 7% of black teenagers and 14% of Latino children, she said.
Friends of Jennifer Caridad, a 24-year-old day care worker of Mexican descent, posted her case from Sunnyside, Washington, on social media after receiving little notice in August. As in Petito’s case, Caridad is said to have last been with her boyfriend. He was arrested for car theft and attempted murder after shooting police during a pursuit for her disappearance.
So far, the authorities have no answers for Caridad’s parents. Enrique Caridad goes to the police twice a week to get news about his daughter.
“They tell me they won’t rest until it’s found,” he said. “I tell you to please tell me your last whereabouts so I can help you find you. But they tell me not to interfere, not to violate the case. “
The detectives took DNA samples from the parents and said there were blood stains on their SUV, but they have yet to say if it was Caridad’s blood. Initially, her parents struggled to understand English-speaking detectives, but after the case is turned over to a smaller police department, they are able to speak Spanish to one of the investigators.
“Not knowing is what is killing us – not knowing if she is alive or if she was hurt by this man,” said Caridad.
David Robinson temporarily moved to Arizona from South Carolina to look for his son Daniel, who went missing in June. The 24-year-old black geologist was last seen on a construction site in Buckeye, outside of Phoenix. A month later, a rancher found his car in a ravine a few miles away. His keys, cell phone, wallet and clothes were also seized. But no trace of him.
The Petito saga unexpectedly highlighted his son’s case when people used the hashtag #findgabypetito on Twitter to draw more attention to missing colored people cases.
“Before that, I worked hard for three months to get it out nationwide,” said Robinson, who communicated with other families about the reporting discrepancy. “It’s bigger than I thought. … It’s not just about my son Daniel. It’s a national problem. “
Another family whose case was highlighted by this hashtag – Lauren “El” Cho, a missing 30-year-old Korean American from California – said in a Facebook statement that they understood the frustrations but cautioned the differences between the cases “Are deeper than what meets the requirements”. public eye. “
Asians and Asian Americans definitely face the same message visibility problem, said Kent Ono, a communications professor at the University of Utah. The “role model minority myth” that Asians are successful and don’t get into trouble also contributes to the problem.
“That makes it very difficult for readers and viewers to imagine that Asian and Asian Americans have problems at all that they cannot solve themselves,” he said.
Public awareness is vital in all missing person cases, especially on the first or second day after a disappearance, said Natalie Wilson, who co-founded the Black and Missing Foundation, to draw more attention to unreported cases. Breaking down the racism and stereotypes that link missing people to poverty or crime is key.
“Often times, families … feel that their lives are not valued,” she said. “We have to change the narrative about our missing people to show that they are our sisters, brothers, grandparents. You are our neighbors. You are part of our community. ”
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Tang reported from Phoenix. Gomez Licon answered from Miami.
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