When 18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, of the Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations, disappeared after filming a tense situation between her 15-year-old brother and law enforcement in 2019, her friends and family immediately knew something was wrong.
The social media-savvy teen was always communicative, and was looking forward to a family trip to North Dakota to visit relatives — so when she wasn’t seen from or heard from by her family after August 24, 2019, her silence was deafening.
Several days after she was reported missing, Kaysera’s remains were found locally by a jogger — but her family wasn’t notified that a body matching Kaysera’s description was discovered until September 11, 2019. By that time, the County Coroner had already independently identified that this was Kaysera, and said that Kaysera’s remains had to be cremated in order to be returned to the family.
The exact circumstances surrounding her disappearance and the suspicious death investigation remain ongoing, but experts note that “asphyxia through strangulation by assault” has not been ruled out.
Unfortunately, Kaysera’s story and untimely death as a Native woman could be one of thousands — but the data and tracking of missing and murdered indigenous peoples (MMIP) cases is so scarce, the real number of MMIP cases is nearly impossible to estimate.
“There are so many missing and murdered Indigenous women it has its own acronym: MMIW,” the USA Today notes, highlighting that Thursday May 5th, is a day for awareness about the “crisis ignored.”
Yet, while the real number of cases is nearly impossible to estimate, the statistics that are available are staggering.
Looking at the Numbers
The FBI’s National Crime Information Center reported 5,203 missing Indigenous girls and women in 2021 — disappearing at a rate equal to more than two and a half times their estimated share of the U.S. population. Indigenous women are also two times more likely to be victims of rape compared to white women.
Alarmingly, the Centers for Disease Control notes that murder is the 3rd leading cause of death for Indigenous women — often perpetrated by non-native people.
More than half of Indigenous women experience sexual violence (56.1 percent), and more than half have also been physically abused by their intimate partners (55.5 percent), the Native Women’s Wilderness Organization details.
Cheryl Horn, a resident of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, spoke with USA Today reporters about the lessons her granddaughter and friends had absorbed by an early age, internalizing the notion that at any moment, they could be in danger.
“She sells keychains with whistles and pepper spray for self-defense,” Horn told USA Today. “She and her 11-year-old friends took those keychains when they went to a Walmart in Billings.”
Horn concluded: “They’re very, very aware of the dangers that face them.”
Making Space, and Making Change
With growing awareness of the MMIP crisis, native and non-native organizations are doing the work to help center indigenous voices, and combat the missing and murdered indigenous peoples crisis.
Kristin Welch of the Waking Women’s Healing Institute, an MMIW survivor-led organization, recently spoke with Uncovered, a software platform that combines data, analytics, and crowdsourced information to help solve the cold cases of murdered or missing people.
While on the panel with Uncovered, Welch shared that in her experience, “There’s not one Indigenous woman, girl, that I know or have in my life that has not been touched by some sort of violence or sexual violence — and that’s intergenerationally.”
Also on the panel was Marianne Flynn Statz, former law enforcement and an expert in No Body Homicide and Sensitive Crimes Investigations, who shared that “missing persons continue to be a black hole.”
The lack of data and lack of awareness Statz noted to be incredibly troubling and contributing to this darkness.
Starla Thompson, an Indigenous educator, scholar, and advocate shared with Uncovered that colonial trauma, prejudicial law enforcement agencies, and the media have all shifted the spotlight away from this crisis for decades.
She says it’s time we shift the spotlight back.
Thompson knows the gut-wrenching statistics by heart, emphasizing that Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit individuals need their stories ethically shared in the media to bring awareness to this ongoing crisis.
“We’re really seeing that tribal communities are breeding grounds for predators,” Thompson shared with Uncovered. “This is part of the problem.”
Indigenous advocates and non-native allies alike are grateful that policy is making a change.
In 2020, Savanna’s Act was passed, requiring the Department of Justice to review, revise and develop policies and protocols to address MMIP cases.
Moreover, last year in 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Halland (Laguna Pueblo) announced the formation of the Missing and Murdered Unit that will focus on analyzing and solving MMIP cases.
Thompson concludes: “It’s going to take a lot of work for the system to change, but individually…we can make change — now and today.”
Additional Reading: ‘Don’t Let Our People Die in Silence’: Indigenous Crime Victims Still Uncounted
The full Uncovered panel can be viewed here.
Andrea Cipriano is the Associate Editor of TCR.
1 Comment
After reading about the abduction of a women jogging in the dark, I searched for ‘missing indigenous women’ thinking things had improved since the last time I checked five years ago, but tragically it’s worse now! Women quite simply have to take care of themselves because law enforcement isn’t doing enough to stop this! So, ladies, just don’t go out, or even outside, alone at night! Also, one veteran homicide detective said, “Never, never, never open the door,” even if, as he explained, you were just the afternoon before chatting with a county or city worker, for example, and now the man’s knocking at your door. And, he added, if you go to the post office or to a store — or anyplace! — whatever the time of day, before walking back to your car, scan the scene carefully surrounding your vehicle, have your car door key ready, then get in, quickly lock the door, turn your car on, and go — don’t dillydally even for one second looking at stuff (do that when you get home) because police are positive that’s when many women are abducted. I will leave another reply soon about something simple you can buy to keep any door from being kicked in.