Cayla Nimmo

“Sometimes it’s like a dream,” says Jacqueline Whitman. “Did I actually give birth to Ariel? Was she really here for 26 years?” Katczinzki Ariel Begay was Whitman’s eldest daughter. She was reported missing July 3, 2017. For months, Whitman and her family searched in vain for Ariel, following leads and carrying her photo throughout the Navajo Nation and its border towns. October 19, Navajo Nation criminal investigators visited Whitman at her home with the news. Ariel was murdered; her partial remains discovered at the bottom of a wash near their home. No arrests have been made in Ariel’s case. 

According to a 2016 report by the National Institute of Justice, 84.3% of Native American women and 81.6% of Native American men have experienced violence in their lifetimes. According to the same study, Native women are ten times as likely to be murdered compared to the national average. Despite the prevalence of violent crimes, these cases have a low prosecution rate. Between lack of tribal resources, jurisdictional conflicts, substance abuse and racist conflict in border towns, Native Americans are murdered or go missing at alarmingly high rates with few cases resolved. 

This violence has deep historical roots. The pain reverberates through centuries of poverty, genocide, disenfranchisement, and abuse. Violence, murder, the missing leave a gaping hole in the lives of the family members left behind to pick up the pieces. That pain echoes out. It's in their grief, in their fight, in the community. It is in the demand for changing legislation. It echoes the resounding scream "no more."

The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the United States equaling roughly the size of West Virginia at 27,425 square miles and spanning three states – New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. The Navajo police force is only at 200, which is 70 short of the tribal mandated minimum. It is common for a single officer to patrol 1,000 miles alone. Underfunded and overwhelmed, cases go cold and families are left mourning loved ones with no closure.  

Between lack of tribal resources, jurisdictional conflicts and little media coverage, cases of missing and murdered Native Americans will remain unsolved. Fed up with inaction, a national movement for missing and murdered indigenous women, #MMIW, has formed. In 2015, Meskee Yatsayte, inspired by the national movement, created Navajo Missing Persons Updates where she scoured the national missing persons database for Navajo cases and launched a grassroots movement to raise awareness of the missing men and women on Navajo. According to her independent research, 28 people are currently missing, 17 are men, though the numbers may change daily. 

Yatsayte is adamant about including men in the missing and murdered indigenous women movement, as violence, murder, and disappearances affect them at disproportionately higher rates. In 2018, Yatsayte met with the Vice President of the Navajo Nation Jonathan Nez to draft a resolution declaring 2018 to be the Year of Missing Relatives for Navajo. 

Loreal Tsingine, 27

Loreal Tsinigine was killed by Winslow Police Officer Austin Shipley Easter Sunday 2016 when she advanced on the officer holding scissors while he was attempting to arrest her in association to a convenince store robbery. Officer Shipley fired his gun five times at Tsingine. Officer Shipley had a documented history of excessive force, yet was found not guilty in her murder. March 2018, Navajo Nation has sued the federal government and Winslow over the wrongful death of Tsingine.