Shout it from the MountainTop
Our Sister has been found
FOUND… but not without a FIGHT.
For many of us scrolling through the newsfeed on Social Media is a daily painful experience, sifting the pages of the recent Missing or Murdered Posts of our Native Relatives, predominantly young women and girls but also our Grandmas, Aunties, Uncles, sons are missing too. With daily prayers, organized grassroots prayerful actions, Ongoing Data mapping of Sovereign Bodies, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in office creating MMIW task forces, more public awareness the hope was to see this atrocity come to a resolve… yet daily new faces, stories of families in desperation searching for a loved one continue flood the pages.
#MMIW #MMIWG2S #MMIWP #MMIWR
With all we’ve come to know, the complex myriad of reasons that attribute to this contemporary expression of Indigenous Genocide we’ve been unable to stop the hemorrhage… we continue to bleed ?
In this prayerful work it is rare we meet an Indigenous family that has not lost a loved one, either still missing or found murdered. Our communities are not only touched by loss, but still ravaged by it.
August this year our beautiful Sister, Northern Cheyenne, Nancy White Horse’ face began to circulate in a MISSING post. A sister, we’ve marched with, prayed with, cried with. A sister who showed up and took action. Our hearts were broken.
Way of the Sacred Mountain was fortunate to work with the family and given permissions to take action on their behalf. We began putting pieces together and doing the investigative footwork, reached out to Lydia Ponce, MMIW-LA.
What we discovered in this process is an outrage. As the family was denied filing a MISSING PERSON report in Santa Monica where she was last seen. They were informed to file South Dakota. She’s been living in LA for the past 5 years.
This is the jurisdiction run around families are given still. I finally made my way to Santa Monica Police department, where for nearly 2 hours I fought for the right to input Nancy White Horse Name into the National Missing and Unidentified Person Database. I was intimidated, if not downright humiliated but I left with an Incident number. A week later received a call from the Detective saying this shouldn’t have been submitted to NATIONAL MISSING PERSON DATABASE. He needed more info.
When I shared with Detective Larious who We are, Way of the Sacred Mountain, the work we do for families of the Missing. He shut me down, saying he doesn’t want to hear about our Advocacy spiel. Wtf ?. Standing ground in unrelenting determination, with decorum, i assured them we will not stop until she’s found.
I told detective Larious Nancy’s sister would call him. She placed several unreturned calls and emails. I followed up with calls as well.
He finally called the family, Nancy’s sister and was met with the same conviction. She told him he was wasting time and why aren’t they looking for her sister. He told us both they are not in the business of reuniting families. When she let him know the LA homicide unit and Sherifs department have also been informed, it put a fire ? under him.
On the Eve of Kumeyaay Winter Bazarre as we were taking down the tipi. I got the message from Nancy’s sister. Finally, he took it upon himself to do some investigating of his own which led to her being
FOUND!!!!
The fact that Neither one of these Officers were even aware of MMIW Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is shameful. We are grateful that after putting up a tremendous fight, they got off their …. And went to search. It shouldn’t be this way.
EVERY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY IN AMERICA SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MMIW and be Trained to have a rapid response team ready, to be respectful and responsive to Native families whose trauma of a missing loved one is compounded by 500 years of abuse.
We are grateful some inroads have been made in Santa Monica Police department for better collaboration with the urban Indigenous communities they serve. ???