DISAPPEARANCE OF NATIVES

HSENEWS 7 DISAPPEARANCE OF NATIVE AMERICANS DISCOVERY OF SELENA NOT AFRAID SPARKS NATIONWIDE CONVERSATION Less than one mile southwest of Interstate 90 laid Montana 16-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid’s body. After disappearing on New Year’s Day thirteen days prior, Not Afraid’s aunt Cheryl Horn led friends, family and strangers together on a three-week search for the teenage girl. “We’re not going to be just a file in the cabinet,” Horn told Dateline. “We’re going to find our girl. And when Selena is found, there are hundreds of more girls behind her waiting to be found.” The tragic fate of Selena Not Afraid is not the first of its kind. Two years prior, Not Afraid led a charge of her own, advocating on social media about the large amount of missing and murdered indigenous women after the murder of her own sister. According to a report from the Associated Press, “nearly three hundred cases of missing Native American women and girls have been reported to the authorities in Montana in [2019] alone.” Despite Native Americans making up less than 7 percent of Montana’s population, they make up a majority of missing person and murder reports, being 4 times more likely to be murdered than the nonNative population. In the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives made up 1.8 percent of the ongoing missing cases in 2017, despite only representing 0.8 percent of the U.S. population, and many experts believe that is a low estimate due to many tribes lacking access to the database as well as the unknown number of unreported cases that never get discovered. Incidents of missing and murdered women deeply and personally affect indigenous people across the country and across different tribes. Blackfoot Nation member and film maker Ivan MacDonald documented the devastating impact on families cause by Native womens’ disappearances and murders in a 2015 documentary ‘When They Were Here’. “I can’t think of a single person that I know... who doesn’t have some sort of experience [with female friends or family who’s disappeared or been murdered],” MacDonald said in his documentary. “These women aren’t just statistics. These are grandma’s, these are mom’s. This is an aunt, this is a daughter. This is someone who was loved... and didn’t get the justice that they so desperately needed.” Due to the lack of consistent data over these cases, officers and citizens are left with no explanation on what is causing this increasing violence. “We just get so used to seeing it, you just become numb and it becomes normal,” Blackfoot woman and activist for Native women’s safety Diana Burd told Billings Gazette. “But when you step back and look at how bad it is, I feel like that isn’t normal.” Dangers for i n d i g e n o u s women go beyond disappearances and missing persons reports. On some Native A m e r i c a n reservations, the murder rate of women is ten times the national average according to the Central for Public Integrity. Plagued by an endless loop of injustices, Native women are left seemingly forgotten, and pushed aside as if their lives are less important, until November 26th 2019, when President Donald Trump established the Operation Lady Justice executive order, dedicated to finding and avenging missing and murdered Native American women. “We remain committed to preserving and protecting Native American cultures, languages, and history, while ensuring prosperity and opportunity for all Native Americans.” Trump said in his address. Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid was many things, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a spark. Her disappearance brought the ill treatment of Native Americans to the forefront of issues in the United States. Story by Kathryn Collins. 2% OF MISSING INDIGENOUS WOMEN CASES WERE LOGGED TO THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE DATABASE IN 2016 LIFETIME RATE OF RAPE / ATTEMPTED RAPE FOR WOMEN RACE OF ALL REPORTED MISSING FEMALES IN JULY 2017 IN MONTANA 30% NATIVE AM ERI CAN GIRLS INDIGENOUS WOMEN 34% OTHER WOMEN 18% 70% OTHER WOMEN “WE’RE NOT GOING TO BE JUST A FILE IN THE CABINET. WE’RE GOING TO FIND OUR GIRL AND AFTER SELENA IS FOUND, THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF MORE GIRLS BEHIND HER WAITING TO BE FOUND.”