The Plight of Missing Native Women, and How Not to Report on It

I write "true crime for survivors."  That's not just a tagline, it's all I can do to push back against the way sexual violence is normally reported -- by people with no skin in the game.  All personal opinions, no personal knowledge.

For example, this discussion of missing and murdered Native women on Huffington Post.  Even people who mean well say really offensive things, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I grew up with a lot of Native people in Chicago.  I went to many powwows and learned a lot about their communities and what they deal with, the lasting legacies of forced assimilation, "boarding schools," and what people do to retain what they have.

Unfortunately I can't afford to read coverage by people such as the linked author, Sage Howard.   I don't know her ethnic background but if she were Native (or a rape survivor) I believe she would have mentioned it.  Maybe she's a lawyer, I don't know her credentials for writing about it.

From my personal perspective as both a sexual assault (trafficking) survivor and a cold-case survivor with respect to my friend Wendy Huggy, what's obvious to me is that the issues Native women face are worse because of the general status and treatment of the Native community, not because of the difference among women.  I'm not saying I'm not horrified.   I'm constantly stunned by how little anyone cares when any woman or even young girl goes missing.  They're always allowed to say, "She ran off." 

It's just that the way the Native community gets marginalized by the federal government in the first place, shoved out of basic protections, metastasizes the problems that all women face in America -- which ranks pretty low in women's rights worldwide and always has.  Unsurprisingly, Native women bear the ultimate brunt of the extreme violence and apathy.  So it's bigger in scale among Native women.   It's a worse problem in a poorer community with less resources in the first place.  It's vile, the way they get ignored.  Here is a good report that suggests how this problem spirals even further out of control for Native women than for the rest of us.

But people don't seem to understand that the police ignore white women all the time, when they aren't the ones raping us.  People have told me many times that white women don't get raped by the police.  Maybe that's why Andrew Mitchell was acquitted again? 

White women aren't even people in the US constitution.  I don't believe Native Americans are, either.  We aren't mentioned, and thus have always been able to be legally discriminated against.  Not as horrifically as Native women.  But white men rape and murder us with near impunity too.  Then they monetize it on TV.  Then people are mad at us because it's even worse for Native women.

So I was hoping there would be some bright spot, some actual hopeful news for Native women.  That's why I clicked the linked article.  The most hopeful thing in that article, honestly, is that TikTok is on it now.  Because I was already aware of the new DoJ initiative, where they're adding ten new attorneys in five regions.  I have little faith or confidence in that.  Last week the Supreme Court saw fit to strip the Navajo Nation of its water rights in a bit of arrogance that stuns my mind.

But TikTok might get results in the real world.  Because TikTok can get people to wake up and understand things, possibly.  And that's what it really takes, I think, people caring about it en masse.   There's a "red hand over the mouth" visual that's really striking, and gets people to understand the gravity of the situation.  And that might help, maybe.  But I've seen the left side of America to also have a very strong male supremacist streak.  I'm not so hopeful.

What won't do a damned thing but line the author's pocket was the linked article.  And that's unfortunate, because she came dangerously close to making a useful point.  But only after making a shitty one, so bad that in my eyes it disqualifies her from writing on this topic, makes her "anti-survivor."

I'd like you to consider these two paragraphs, see how she's comparing apples to piston engines.

"During our lifetimes, we’ve all witnessed the outrage, morbid curiosity and grief that results when white women disappear or are murdered. All humans who suffer in this way deserve that same attention.

We also just experienced nonstop coverage of the Titan submersible, a vessel that disappeared during a tourist expedition to see the sunken Titanic. The urgency around missing Native people should match the media and government efforts put toward finding Titan’s five wealthy passengers."

This author conflates women who are abducted, raped, and murdered with male billionaires who go off on a lark!  HOLY SHIT. 

Howard really can't (a) see the difference between women who get kidnapped, raped, and murdered, and male billionaires who die on an adventure, if they're all white people.  

She also can't (b) see how blowing up one or two sexual violence cases in the news enables ignoring all of the other ones.  Maybe she thinks only one or two white women get murdered each year, the ones she sees on TV?  Could Sage Howard have a sensible conversation with me about Andrew Mitchell and Donna Castleberry?

Does she (c) somehow think the way sexual violence is reported is the preference of white sexual violence survivors, that people like me had a say in this? Howard assigns the same amount of agency to female rape survivors and male billionaires if they're both white.  Meanwhile on Earth 1, I have the amount of voice you see on this blog, she's on Huffington Post.

Had Howard omitted the first paragraph altogether, not felt the need to throw white rape/murder victims under the bus, I would have thought it was just another useless article for people who have never thought about this topic and really don't care about it.  Now I actually feel trolled.

Let me come back to the actual words she said, how foolish and wrong-headed they are.  I will need to address it in two passes.

1.  "During our lifetimes, we’ve all witnessed the outrage, morbid curiosity and grief that results when white women disappear or are murdered. All humans who suffer in this way deserve that same attention." 

Ask yourself, do those three emotions add up to compassion, support, or what?  Outrage and grief, okay.  But morbid curiosity?  If that were the emotional equivalent of a pie, would you eat it?  The morbid curiosity is the part where the delivery driver spat in it.  I didn't order that.  I'd prefer to cook in for everyone, if I had any say in it, which I never have had.

2.  "During our lifetimes, we’ve all witnessed the outrage, morbid curiosity and grief that results when white women disappear or are murdered. All humans who suffer in this way deserve that same attention." 

Really?  You think all rape/murder victims should be treated the same way JonBenet Ramsey was? Because the police screwed her case all up, attacked the family instead of following the evidence, the media went ridiculous, and they never solved it.  It was decades of morbid curiosity that enriched all kinds of uninvoled third parties.  I'm pretty sure her special-needs brother is still suffering about it every day.  And the actual murderer DGAF, meanwhile, this woman wrote this article on HuffPo.  Merry Christmas to the Ramseys.

You think Dave Chappelle should do a bit talking shit about every Native teen who gets kidnapped the way he did Elizabeth Smart?  They publicized that case to hopefully help find the girl over nine months.  Meanwhile the police contacted them twice and it didn't help her one bit, they allowed the kidnapper to have his way while Elizabeth was shackled to his wife.  She wasn't able to get her privacy back afterwards.  Sage Howard is wishing this on everybody.

JonBenet and her family had no agency in any of that, didn't ask to be publicized, got no benefit from any of it, didn't have the option of their privacy, and in general, it's a completely idiotic thing to wish on anyone.  Think about it.  The Ramsey family would love to have none of it ever have happened to them at all.  Same with Elizabeth Smart.  She was already rich.  She didn't need money from writing a book.  It's a moronic conversation.

Also, both of the two examples I gave were significantly richer and whiter than me, Anglo Saxon Protestants, whose crimes were able to be reported and who got support from their families and the community overall, unlike me.  Just saying.  Those two were best-case scenarios of blonde whiteness, and even they couldn't rely on the police and got seriously attacked and exploited in the media.  People reveled in the brutality against them, rejoiced in it.

Key point:  The attention to the submersible fiasco may have actually made a difference in helping the people involved.  The attention paid to sexual violence, especially against white women, is almost purely exploitative.  That's one reason I spend my time and money creating whatever little platform I have.

God bless the Native community.  I wish that there was more I could do.  I wish there were real solutions coming.  I don't know what they will be.  There's no chance that the media will start caring about them in the same way they do about the submersible people.  That will be more of a TikTok thing.