This Native American Life

BACK IN JUNE, activist Shaun King tweeted out a colleagues Intercept story to his million-plus followers: All over this country, for decades on end now, indigenous women have gone missing at an alarming rate, he wrote. Authorities are just now truly acknowledging the crisis. I remembered then to ask around the rez whether Roberta was still missing.

- Terese Mailhot

Roberta, whose name I have changed to protect her privacy, is from my reserve on British Columbia’s Seabird Island. It’s a small community, and it only took a few Facebook messages to learn she’d been spotted at a 7-Eleven. I’d seen her myself a few months earlier, and she wasn’t looking well. When I was young I used to babysit for a friend of hers, and I still remember how hard they partied. Someone close to Roberta told me she had been trying to stay in recovery—she was “lost but not lost.” Just putting this to paper perpetuates a negative stereotype: We’re doing this to ourselves.

In March, Roberta had posted on Facebook, “Do you believe in me? acknokwledge me please.” She was reported missing April 13, and for weeks I would stare at her profile picture, then at her “missing person” photo. She eventually resurfaced. Then a woman from my father’s nearby reserve went missing. Her name is Shawnee and she’s 29 years old.

Native people are familiar with brutality, with our histories. We bear witness firsthand, and then again via media reports articulating how bad we have it—if they notice us at all. It seems like all I see in my news feed are missing-persons photos and stories about racism against us. I empathize with Roberta’s circumstances. I think it’s easy to fall in a hole where I’m from, easy to give up hope. People will be mad at me for saying that.