Clink, clink, clink! The sound of quarters being dispensed out of the change machine snapped me out of my gaze. The WRFI crew had just reached Browning, Montana. Our group had made it out of the Bob Marshall Wilderness a day prior, and we were ecstatic to finally have clean clothes and some food that didn’t require any rehydration. We were on the Blackfeet Reservation; looking forward to guest lectures from Blackfeet Tribal members and learning more about Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The Blackfeet have thousands and thousands of years of lived experience, which we were eager to learn about in the coming days. However, I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of the corkboard hanging on the wall. Posted on this board were three names: Leo Wagner, 26, Ashley Loring Heavy Runner, 21, and Arden Pepion, 3. While I am not a local to the area, these three people had gone missing, yet I had never heard their names before.
My mind immediately thought of the name Gabby Petito. The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a young white woman, was broadcasted nationwide, as the country seemed to band together to try to find her. Once her remains were found, the nation was heartbroken and angered by evidence later released, showing that prior to her disappearance there was a domestic disturbance incident between Petito and her fiance that was filed as a “mental breakdown” instead. In no way do I mean to disrespect the family of Gabby Petito by mentioning this case. Instead, I use it as an example of the difference of the media representation between a young, white female and Indigenous people going missing. This situation is not just unique to the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning; reservations across the country face the same issues.
The main problems facing Indigenous peoples today are as follows:
- Lack of representation
- Lack of resources
- Lack of autonomy
Beginning with the lack of representation, I want you to think about the last time that you read, watched, or listened to a story surrounding a missing Indigenous person. My guess is that you have never heard of it before or if you have, it was only once on a rare occasion or if you are local to the area. This underrepresentation is a remnant of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism aimed to erase Indigenous tribes across the country by means of separation from resources, alienation from their homes and communities, and extermination. In this case, Indigenous peoples are being removed and excluded from media and the digital space.
The lack of resources stems from a history of dispossession and settler colonialism. For instance, the creation of Glacier National Park is shrouded in a history of lies, deception, and trauma. In 1895, the Blackfeet signed an agreement which ceded land which is now Glacier National Park. This agreement was later used by the U.S. government in 1910 to create the Glacier Park Act, which, “excluded Indians from Glacier,” (Spence, 1996, p. 40). This decision not only started a century of spiritual, cultural, and emotional trauma for the Blackfeet, but excluded them from a major source of revenue.
Finally, we learned about the lack of autonomy found on reservations. Our class was lucky enough to have a guest lecture from Alicia Yellow Owl and her son Taos, who are Blackfeet Tribal members. I asked her, “Why is there such little representation for missing Indigenous peoples in the news?” She responded by saying that the process for reporting missing persons is complicated. Tribal governments aren’t allowed to investigate murders, rapes, or kidnappings. When these occur, the federal government must be called to come and investigate. This can be problematic, as these government agents can be sent from anywhere in the country, resulting in slow response times, wasting valuable days, hours, and minutes in these time sensitive cases. Yellow Owl also mentioned, “If there are reports or rumors that these [missing persons] were planning on running away, they take it less seriously.” This reliance on the federal government led me to ask her why this is the way it is. Yellow Owl laughed wryly and simply stated, “We don’t have the funding.” She continued to state that any money given to the Tribe for this would be money that the government would lose. As Taos put it, “We are a thorn in their side.”
This is only one example of how the Blackfeet (and countless other tribal nations) were displaced, manipulated, and intentionally separated from locations of cultural significance by the U.S. government. The historical trauma and intentional forgetting of these peoples has led to present day issues surrounding their representation in the media and autonomy within their governments. Furthermore, missing and murdered Indigenous peoples and their families must rely on support from the federal government, as they do not have the power to investigate these cases on their own, which extends as a symptom of setter colonialism.