Yá’át’ééh.

It’s been almost six months since we announced the project. With the new year, what better time to update everyone about what I’ve been working on since then.

In case you missed it, I was hired at Arizona Luminaria in August to lead an accountability journalism project about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People in Arizona, also known as MMIWG2T. With support from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists, I’m creating a database that maps where Indigenous people have gone missing or were murdered. I am also writing in-depth profiles about some of the people whose lives are at the center of this injustice.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).

I set out to do this project because I want Indigenous people to have a chance to tell their own stories. As an Indigenous woman, I knew those chances haven’t always been divvied up fairly or equitably. As a Native journalist and lifelong Arizonan who grew up on the Navajo Nation, I also know this is something I can change.

I’ve had the privilege of hearing from people who are either directly impacted by or working to address the injustice of MMIWG2T, or in many cases both. Some families have granted me permission to write about their loved ones. I’m honored and grateful for their trust.

These stories about Indigenous people who have lost loved ones haven’t been easy to hear. I can only imagine it’s infinitely more difficult for the families who relive it through every word.

I know that was true for Elayne Gregg, whose 7-year-old daughter Rhia Almeida was murdered in Ajo nearly 15 years ago. We sat at her dining table as she cried remembering that day. As a mom, I couldn’t stop myself from shedding tears, too.

“She was just a walking lightbulb, she glowed all the time,” Elayne said of her daughter.

In Arizona, there are Indigenous people working to shed light on how we can do better.

Recently, we published a story about April Ignacio, a Tohono O’odham community organizer and activist for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, also often known as MMIWG. Before this injustice became more widely known, April began identifying people from her Tribal Nation whose loved ones were murdered or are missing. She started compiling her own data and eventually co-founded a grassroots organization, Indivisible Tohono, that now heavily focuses on MMIWG.

In December, April applied for an appointment to a vacant seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. If selected, she would’ve been the first Indigenous person to ever serve on the board and lead District 3, which encompasses most of her tribal nation’s 2.8 million acres of land.

“I think that this (appointment) actually helps center the issues that are very close to my heart,” April told Arizona Luminaria at the time. “For a lot of the families that I have been working with, a lot of the people in the community who really carry on this work, it actually allows them further access to finding solutions on how to combat these (MMIWG) issues.”

April was a top contender for the seat, however, was not ultimately selected because some supervisors wanted a temporary appointee who would not seek election for the permanent seat. April said she will run in the upcoming election.

Seeking public input 

Going into this project, I knew it was unlikely that I’d be able to identify every instance in which an Indigenous person is missing or was murdered.

For starters, not every incident is accurately documented or reported in the first place. I’m also learning that older reports can be difficult for officials to locate without super specific information that isn’t always known, like a case number.

But I want to account for as many people as possible, especially if their loved one hasn’t received the attention they deserve. So I have created a digital resource for Indigenous people to voice their own stories.

This idea was inspired by Caresse Jackman, a journalist who led a workshop I attended in October at the Fall National College Media Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Jackman said she was investigating the desecration of Black cemeteries when she realized data about the issue was hard to come by. So she began tracking these instances on her own, creating a survey where people could share locations of burial sites at risk of being erased or built over by construction and development projects.

What I’ve learned to be true from my career as a journalist so far is that data can drive change. Still, data is not without its limitations. And it certainly is far from comprehensive when people from underrepresented communities are misrepresented or excluded altogether.

The more we work together as communities across Arizona’s Sovereign Nations, the more we will learn about instances of Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People, and the better data can be compiled to understand root causes and potential fixes for this injustice.

If you are comfortable sharing, please tell me about a loved one who went missing or was murdered by filling out the questionnaire to the best of your ability. You can also send it to others you think may want to share their stories. Any responses submitted through the questionnaire are protected and completely anonymous, unless you voluntarily enter your contact information because you want me to reach out so we can talk.

One important step baked into this journalism project is that Arizona Luminaria and the IWMF have paved the way for it to be Indigenous-led from conception and execution to publication.

Each day, I tackle challenges — sometimes on my own and other times with help from people in our communities —  and I know I can rely on my women-led editorial team at our nonprofit newsroom for support, as well as my fellow Indigenous mentor at IWMF. Still, as someone who’s never been in a leadership role before, I am learning how to stretch my comfort zone.

Some days, this means letting my editor know we need to head in another direction. Other days, it means a fourth, fifth or sixth message to local law enforcement agencies to explain why the public has a right to police reports and other public records. In October, it meant flying across the country, to the South, where I have never been before, to speak on a panel focused on Missing and Murdered Indigenous people at the Atlanta journalism convention.

The Indigenous Journalists Association invited me to fill in at the recommendation of Shondiin Silversmith, a fellow Diné journalist at the Arizona Mirror and an IJA board member. I was joined on the panel by Brooke Manuel, a Texas-based student and editor of the Sul Ross State University’s student newspaper. The conversation was moderated by IJA Education Manager Sheena Roetman, who is Sicangu Lakota and Muscogee Creek.

About 50 people tuned in. Roetman said that was significantly larger than when she moderated a different Indigenous-centered panel at the convention years prior. Most appeared to be college journalism students and genuinely interested in learning more about news coverage of Missing and Murdered Indigenous people.

I tend to avoid public speaking. I knew talking about MMIWG2T and this project was more important than my fears of talking in front of a roomful of strangers.

When the panel ended, several people lined up to keep talking with me about MMIWG2T and our ongoing project. One woman said her parents live in Arizona and would be interested in following our work. An Indigenous student also shared her own personal story about a loved one who was murdered in New Mexico.

Navigating public records

There isn’t an official system in place to track the history, or data, of MMIWG2T in Arizona. I’m starting from scratch.

In addition to the initial manual searches of social media and other sites I did to identify Indigenous people who are missing or were murdered, I knew I’d also have to file numerous public records requests to find out some of this information.

To prepare, I participated in a National Freedom of Information Coalition training on public records, which consisted of four weekly, hour-long sessions and access to the Coalition’s annual summit. This training not only helped provide guidance on how to write my request for this project, but also shared tips on how to deal with potential hurdles and connected me with a local mentor.

I’ve since filed more than 70 public records requests to police agencies across the state, and more are in the queue.

It’s been difficult to keep up with the records by myself while also trying to do some reporting. Because this is unfamiliar territory for many of the law-enforcement agencies involved, I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time clarifying and tweaking my requests according to an agency’s specifications.

I’ve learned that electronic record systems that are supposed to track criminal reports and cases  vary widely from agency to agency. Some law-enforcement agencies purchase systems that allow officials to use as many filters as they wish to find records, while others are significantly more limited. Even agencies that use the same system can have differences based on whichever subscription plan it pays for.

For example, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department uses a system called Spillman and cannot filter its searches for records by race or gender, according to the agency’s Information Records Supervisor Amber Halkowitz. El Mirage Police Department, on the other hand, also uses Spillman, yet, interestingly, was able to provide me with a list of cases filtered by those same criteria – race and gender – and then some. These lists with information that includes people’s race and gender allow me to focus on investigating cases that involve Indigenous people.

“There’s not a way to do (a search for) missing person, but the person missing is a female, (or) missing person but the person is a male and he’s Native American,” Halkowitz said. “There’s not a searchable way to pull that information, if that information is even collected or known during the investigation or the incident.”

Many of my records requests are still a work in progress, including the ones that have been outright denied or have received no responses at all.

There have been bright spots for accessing law enforcement reports about harmed Indigenous people. A few agencies have already fulfilled my public records requests, some without asking any questions. A handful are even going out of their way to manually search through paper records and microfilm or microfiche, which are typically decades old and haven’t been transferred to their electronic records system.

Carol Capas, a support service supervisor and public information officer for the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, for example, searched all of the agency’s records, including combing through microfiche dating back to 1957. She even provided unprompted updates, including once at 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday.

Most of the time, however, this work has been deemed “too burdensome” by officials with an agency’s records department and they forgo searching paper records at all unless I can provide a specific case number. That is nearly impossible without the initial police reports – the very public record I am requesting from law enforcement agencies charged to maintain these documents.

On one hand, I empathize with the employees. I imagine finding, reading and redacting these reports isn’t an easy task. I’m appreciative to the records employees who have been graceful and patient with me as I navigate this process. I’ve also learned many of these agency’s records departments are understaffed and yet inundated with requests.

On the other hand, the idea that some of these records won’t be found is difficult to accept.

Arizona’s public records laws “requires all officers and public bodies to maintain records reasonably necessary to provide an accurate accounting of their official activities and of any government-funded activities.” It’s one way of ensuring the public can hold their government accountable for transparency.

To put it into perspective, based on responses I received from more than 30 Arizona law-enforcement records departments, current electronic records systems usually only house records that, on average, date back to the year 2000. That means a majority of the records I gain access to in this process will mostly only account for about 24 years of information.

Mind you, the injustice of MMIWG2T has been occurring since before this country was founded.

I’ve covered criminal justice issues in my home state for half a decade. In many ways I understand the challenges. Some days, I am less patient.

I find myself wondering: How is it that so many criminal justice agencies responsible for caring for the safety of all people have such limited systems for accounting for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous people among us?

I find myself understanding more than ever how frustrated Indigenous families have lost trust in policing systems.

It brings me back to people like Ida Mae Lee and Mary Margaret Begay, Navajo women who went missing at separate times in 1956 while working at Grand Canyon South Rim – the same community I moved to as a teenager. Not only are these cases decades old but they happened at a time when things like social media didn’t exist.

So without access to their records, how else can their stories be told today?