Social media platform raises awareness, action on what still often remains hidden

BY: FRANK ZUFALL – AUGUST 16, 2024 5:30 AM

     

Missing Indigenous Women and Girls Day of Awareness made a human chain around the Wisconsin State Capitol on Friday, May 5, 2023. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

NationTalk: Wisconsin Examiner – If you’re a Facebook (Meta) friend with a person from a tribal community, you are likely to see posts  in your news feed about missing persons, especially those considered Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).

For those living in northwestern Wisconsin, where the tribes are predominantly Ojibwe — with Ojibwe bands spread out across northern Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and southern Ontario and Manitoba, Canada — tribal Facebook friends will often post missing persons notices from those states and provinces, as well as missing notices from around Indian Country, including Alaska and even Pacific Islanders from Hawaii.

A recent example of a reposting many Facebook users saw in Wisconsin was posted by the Bemidji, Minnesota, Police Department for an 18-year-old who had been missing since July 10 but who reconnected with her family on Monday, July 22.

Rene Ann Goodrich, a Bad River tribal member and Wisconsin MMIW Task Force Member and founder of Native Lives Matter Coalition, said Facebook, of all the social media platforms, has been instrumental in helping to raise awareness.

“Facebook is jokingly called by indigenous/tribal communities the ‘moccasin telegraph,’” she said. “Almost everyone uses Facebook. The MMIW movement began on social media. Families used the platform to bring awareness and visibility to their missing loved ones and then moved to in-person networking, community activism and advocacy using Facebook as a tool for organizing memorial events and marches.”

A social media post by Native Americans United, titled “Truthful Art,” created by @soni_artist, explains with an image why tribal communities have turned to Facebook:

On one side of the image, there’s a blond-haired woman holding a sign with the words “She is Missing,”  surrounded by reporters.

On the other side, behind the blond-haired woman, a second woman is darker-skinned, raven-haired, wearing a traditional tribal ribbon dress and, across her face, a red handprint, the signature of the MMIW movement. The second woman is also holding the “She is Missing” sign, but there is one big difference between her and the blond-haired woman — no media attention.

Goodrich refers to the attention to one woman receives and the lack of interest in the other as “The Missing White Girl Syndrome.”

“They get all the media attention,” she said of white missing persons. “My goodness, sometimes they even call out the National Guard.”

Cable TV Host Nancy Grace created a national following for  nightly updates on the disappearance of Polly Klass, Elizabeth Smart, Natalee Hollway and Caylee Anthony — all young, all white.

Criticism hasn’t changed the way major media report the news.

 But social media offers an opportunity to get the word out, especially Facebook (now officially called Meta), which originated in 2004. As Facebook grew, Indigenous communities turned to it as a way to raise awareness of MMIW cases.

“There was a time that the only place that you heard about MMIW was on Facebook,” said Goodrich. “It was the only place you heard of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women because it was an invisible epidemic. It was not being covered by the media at all, and we had this disparity of coverage, the Missing White Girl Syndrome.”

Goodrich said Facebook offered Indigenous families of missing persons a platform to share their concerns when there was no media coverage or when families were not able to attend MMIW marches or public annual awareness events.

“Over the past decade, Facebook has become the main social media tool used by Indigenous/tribal families searching for their missing loved ones and requesting help from their families, their community and directly to the public to aid in their search efforts,” she said. “The MMIWR [R for relatives, including missing and murdered men] movement on social media platforms has grown worldwide with no boundaries and has evolved to include large online communities of support groups, resources for families, and greatly enhance the ability to find missing relatives much sooner, help organize searches and offer rewards for information of the missing.”

Facebook postings, said Goodrich, are being used in the search effort of Sheila St. Claire of Duluth, Minnesota, along with a billboard and a poster offering a reward from the Gaagige-Mikwendaagoziwag (They Will Be Remembered Forever) Reward Fund for MMIWR persons in Minnesota.

St. Claire, a Native American woman, went missing from her Duluth, Minnesota, apartment on August 15, 2015.

Human trafficking

Sometimes  relatives or friends of a missing person respond to Facebook posts  with comments that the missing person has reached out to family members or friends, but the person is still officially classified as “missing” or has yet to return to their family.

Goodrich advises families and law enforcement to continue posting because even though a missing person might be contacting relatives to say they are safe there is a chance that the person is being manipulated by a human trafficker, coaching the missing person to make posts to relieve concerns and tamp down the intensity of a search.

Goodrich, who works on both sides of the Twin Ports — Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin — notes the the international shipping port is a site of major concern for human trafficking in the Midwest.

Many of the missing people, especially during the summer months, are teenage run-aways whom human traffickers are notorious for manipulating, especially young persons, who are naive about the traffickers’ motives.

“We ask law enforcement and families and friends to keep reposting until they are back home,” said Goodrich.

BY: FRANK ZUFALL