BOGOTA, Colombia —

Four Indigenous children survived an Amazon plane crash that killed three adults and then wandered on their own in the jungle for 40 days before being found alive by Colombian soldiers.

The announcement of their rescue on Friday brought a happy ending to a saga that had captivated many Colombians, a watch with highs and lows as searchers frantically combed through the rainforest hunting for the youngsters.

President Gustavo Petro celebrated the news upon returning from Cuba, where he signed a cease-fire with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebel group. He said he hoped to talk with them Saturday, and officials said late Friday that the youngsters were being brought to Bogota to be checked at a hospital.

An air force video showed a helicopter using lines to pull the youngsters up because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found. The craft flew off in the fading light, the air force said it was going to San Jose del Guaviare, a small town on the edge of the jungle.

No details were released on how the four siblings aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months managed to survive on their own for so long, though they belong to an Indigenous group that lives in the remote region.

Petro called them an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”

The military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.

The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.

The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.

Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.

During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick folliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.

Rumors also emerged about the childrens' wheareabouts and on May 18 the president tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

The group of four children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed.

They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.

But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle.

Officials did not say how far the children were from the crash site when they were found. But the teams had been searching within a nearly 3-mile radius from the site where the small plane nosedived into the forest floor.

As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues in the jungle that led them to believe the children were still living, including a pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit that looked like it had been bitten by humans.

“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

In recent years, there's been a growing movement of Native Americans reclaiming land that historians say the government stole from tribes in the early 1900s. Historians say the birth of this movement was a 1969 occupation on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

Surrounded by strong currents and cold water, the island of Alcatraz was designed to imprison some of the country's most notorious criminals. However, the penitentiary shut down in 1963. Six years later in 1969, Eloy Martinez stepped foot on the island to participate in a Native American Occupation. It's now a key part of the island's history.

Historians say Native Americans chose to take the island because of an 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that allows the indigenous people to occupy land abandoned by the federal government. Yale professor of American Studies Ned Blackhawk says Native Americans were demanding reparations for what had been taken from them. Blackhawk is a member of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone tribe and the author of The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.

He says the federal government had passed laws in the late 1940s and early 1950s that called for tribal nations to be terminated. It was known as the era of assimilation.

"The activists are trying to think through how do we articulate what we want in relationship to these current government policies, as well as the future of an Indian world that we would like to inhabit," Blackhawk said.

Today, Martinez visits often. His hope is that the occupation is never forgotten. He points out the welcome sign that was painted by Native Americans soon after they arrived on the island.

He says nostalgic feelings flood back every time he returns.

"Free, it was free, happy," Martinez said. "It was exciting because people were doing things, you know, I mean, it was fresh. Nothing, nothing like that had ever happened anywhere else."

He often returns with his good friend, Ilka Hartmann. She's a photographer who was born in Germany during World War II. She says the genocide Native Americans faced during the Gold Rush in the US reminded her of genocide during WWII, igniting her passion to stand up for marginalized communities.

"I was trying to take pictures of the Indians here having taken this land, and I was trying to show them with their pride and their success," Hartmann said.

She captured dozens of photos during the 19-month occupation. They are now on display at an exhibit on the island that she hopes becomes permanent. Other photographers at the exhibit include Brooks Townes and Alan Copeland.

"I remember hearing all the sounds here, the beautiful sounds of the riots that were loose everywhere," Hartmann said. "And it was like a sing-song everywhere. It really, really impressed me. And there were only here and there a few people, so it was very desolate."

Only about 89 Indigenous men, women, and children seized the land, but as Blackhawk states, they also seized the nation's attention.

"And for the first time, really in the 20th Century, Native Americans land literally on the front pages of the national headlines and newspapers," Blackhawk said.

"It was right there," Martinez said. "You had to look at it."

Blackhawk says the occupation sparked a movement of change in the years that followed.

"The occupation of Alcatraz was part of an era that launched a whole range of Native American, what are known as self-determination efforts in education, in the arts, in gaming or economic development, in land management," Blackhawk said.

"Termination policies were ended, the Indian Child Welfare Acts was reenacted, religious acts reenacted, gravesite protection, all that was enacted," Martinez said. "And that would've never happened if Alcatraz hadn't happened."

Blackhawk, Martinez and Hartmann all mention the federal government also returned millions of acres of land back to the tribes in the years that followed.

"45,000 acres of land to the Taos Blue Lake in New Mexico," Hartmann said. "And about 160,000 acres of land to Warm Spring Oregon tribe."

Sacred land is still being returned to Native tribes today. A revolution they say started with the Alcatraz occupation.

 

Five Native American women have disappeared or been killed along California's rugged Lost Coast in the past 18 months.

The crisis has spurred the Yurok Tribe to issue an emergency declaration and brought increased urgency to efforts to build the first database of such cases in California. The tribe also is working to gain supervision over foster care and build an indigenous justice system that would ultimately handle all but the most serious felonies.

Tribal officials say reclaiming sovereignty over such systems is the only way to end the cycle of loss that's taken the greatest toll on their women.

Blythe George, a Yurok tribal member also works on a project that documents the missing and said, “I came to this issue as both a researcher and a learner, but just in this last year, I knew three of the women who have gone missing or were murdered — and we shared so much in common.” George said, “You can’t help but see yourself in those people.”

One of the missing is 33-year-old Emmilee Risling who disappeared after she was last seen walking across a bridge in a remote part of the Yurok Reservation.

Reporting problems have made the true number of missing indigenous persons unknown, according to a 2021 U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

Native women are said to face murder rates that are nearly three times those of white women overall, and up to 10 times that of the national average in many locations. Just in California, the Yurok Tribe and the Sovereign Bodies Institute found 18 cases of missing or murdered Native American women in the past year or so.

SHONTO, Arizona — Connected by endless stretches of dirt roads, the Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the United States. It covers over 27,000 square miles and extends into Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

With nearly 200,000 tribal citizens, homes are spread out over remote, rural area, with many lacking necessities often taken for granted in America.

"Lack of transportation, housing development, electricity – some of the basic needs we definitely lack," said Shanna Yazzie, a project manager for the Navajo Water Project.

Yazzie says growing up without running water at home was normal.

"I think that's where my mindset of always having a plan A, B and C came from. Thinking at least three steps ahead in case a watering point is frozen, ran out of water or is closed," said Yazzie. "And when I say a watering point, we had to travel more than 15, 20 miles to a watering point to get water."

Left out of historic federal investments, infrastructure disparities have long stunted the reservation's economic opportunity and quality of life.

Navajo citizens are among more than two million Americans living without running water and basic indoor plumbing.

"Race is the strongest predictor of whether or not you and your family can just turn on the tap and get water," said George McGraw, founder, and CEO of DigDeep.

The human rights nonprofit organization is dedicated to ensuring every American has access to clean, running water.

"If you're indigenous, you're 19 times more likely not to have running water than a white family. If you're Black or Latino, you're twice as likely," said McGraw. "And that's because the way we've invested in these communities and in these systems has, you know, had a racial component from the very beginning. And certain communities were deliberately left out."

DigDeep partnered with the Navajo people to bring running water and solar power to families on the reservation. McGraw says 30% of homes lack these basic needs.

The indigenous-led Navajo Water Project has provided 300 homes with solar power and underground water systems. Drivers deliver clean water to remote homes each month.

"We make things happen quickly," said Yazzie." We don't have any red tapes, except just getting permission from the homeowners and the community, the local chapter officials."

They prioritize helping elders, veterans, people without transportation, homes with children, and tribal citizens with disabilities and chronic
health conditions.

"Often, when they see us or our water trucks, they will run to the road and try to stop one of our technicians because they need physical help," said Yazzie. "We're kind of like the adopted grandkids for them."

Yazzie says 40% of the team doesn't have running water at home.

"But when you have a way to put a cistern underground, install a water pump, install solar in case you don't have electricity – anything is possible," said Yazzie.

With the newly signed infrastructure bill, that sentiment is closer to reality now than ever before. Billions of dollars are going directly to tribes and reservations to address projects that have gone unfunded for decades.

The historic investment promises to address the decades-long backlog of unfunded infrastructure projects.

"It's hundreds and thousands of projects, all shovel-ready. Some are very big, think water treatment plants and miles and miles of pipe. Some are very small, like a bathroom facility at a public building," said McGraw.

Funding to the Indian Health Service is supposed to be distributed over five years.

"We're going to be watching that process really closely, assisting where we can, representing communities, and making sure their voices are heard."

Day of the Dead is a holiday that originated in Mexico. In Spanish, it’s called "Día de los Muertos." Nohemi Valencia-Bustillos has grown up celebrating it.

“Día de los Muertos is a celebration that we honor the ones that have passed away,” Valencia-Bustillos said.

She says the intent isn’t to mourn those we have lost, but rather to spend time with them. That’s why it’s common to lay out a photo of the person and a few of their favorite things. This year, Nohemi’s altar – called "ofrenda" in Spanish – is an ofrenda inclusive of many more beyond her family and friends.

“My ofrenda, I decided to dedicate it on the lives lost due to COVID, but I specifically focused on people of color and our older generation.”

She says she wanted to focus on people of color because they’ve been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

“On my ofrenda, there are 11 candles," Valencia-Bustillos said. "Those are the people that I know that passed away due to COVID.”

APM Research Lab, a nonpartisan research and analysis division, assembled a database that tracked the impacts of COVID-19 across different racial and ethnic groups during the first year of the pandemic. Craig Helmstetter is the lab’s managing partner.

“What we found over time is that the rate of death was pretty similar between white Americans and Asian Americans, but it was pretty different for other groups," Helmstetter said. "For example, for the Black population, death rates were twice that of the white and Asian population. For the Latino and Pacific Islander populations, death rates were about two and a half times the Asian and white populations. And for the Indigenous population, the death rate was over three times that of the white and Asian populations.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the factors that affect health equity include discrimination, health care access, educational gaps, and occupation.

“For example, populations of color are more likely to work in the service industry, more likely to work in part-time jobs without benefits,” Helmstetter said.

Helmstetter says there’s no evidence this is due to any biological or genetic differences between the groups.

“So, that leaves us with structural or systematic explanations as to why the death rates for COVID-19 are higher among certain populations of color.”

Valencia-Bustillos says it’s been really hard for her community to cope with so many lives lost.

“The older generation, it was a little harder because most of them were in a nursing home, so I had a great aunt who was in a nursing home and died in a nursing home and us as a Latin community, we gather around on their deathbed until they pass," Valencia-Bustillos said. "So this year, when we weren't allowed to, it was a very difficult time for us.”

However, she says she’s grateful for a holiday like Day of the Dead because she gets to sit with her loved ones in spirit. She's also happy to see people from different cultures joining in on the Mexican tradition.

“I love it," Valencia-Bustillos said. "I love seeing all of us come together and celebrating our past. I feel like it makes us united. We all have someone in our lives who we've lost and making an offering is just something we can all share.”

 

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people has gained more attention in recent years, but many who have lost their own say it’s not enough. A new state office that's the first of its kind in the country is working to change that.

Janice Hannigan, Roma L. Jim and Mary Johnson are just a few of the missing Indigenous people in the U.S.

Nicole Matthews, the executive director of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, says most people don't know about the missing Indigenous people.

“Why hasn’t Sheila St. Claire from Duluth, who’s been missing for six years, why isn’t her story isn’t out there? Why don’t we know her name? How come we don’t know about Jojo Boswell, who's been missing for decades, and was 19 when she went missing," Matthews said.

Advocates say a lack of communication, combined with jurisdictional issues between state, local, federal and tribal law enforcement, makes it difficult to start the investigative process.

“Our relationship to the federal government is much different than other racial and ethnic groups. This is our land, everybody that is in this country is standing on Indian land," Matthews said. “So if a non-Native person comes onto our land and rapes a Native woman, our tribes have no recourse. So, if the states or the feds who do have jurisdiction in those cases decline prosecution, that person walks.”

It’s why Matthews was the Vice-Chair of the Missing and Murdered Women’s Task Force in Minnesota and that has led to the country's first State Office for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives.

Sen. Mary Kunesh spearheaded this effort in the Minnesota Senate.

“I’m still floored that we were able to do this good legislative in kind of a short amount of time," Kunesh said. “They were able to use funding’s through the governor’s office to initially create this but it will also be supported through public safety dollars.”

The office now has permanent funding, which means it’s not going anywhere. One of their main efforts is building a data base that will track those names and cases.

“We need to be able to have that liaison there that’s going to be able to go walk between and work between all these different agencies," Kunesh said.

Having no database has made gathering information tough. However, the task force was able to pinpoint some jarring statistics.

“In our task force work, we learned in a ten-year period, in any given month, there were anywhere from 27 to 54 Native women that were missing," Matthews said. “Native women represent about 1% here in Minnesota, but we represent about 8 or 9% of the murdered women in Minnesota. So that is a huge disproportionate impact on our communities.”

Marisa Cummings, the CEO of the Minnesota Women’s Resource Center says there is distrust in government from some tribal members, especially women. 

“I’m thinking about the lack of trust our people have with systems in this country. Systems that have been designed to exterminate us," Cummings said.

Now there is an opportunity to create trust through this office and its partnerships.

“I think the office can be a starting point if the office is staffed with native women that the community trusts," Cummings said. “All of these implicit biases, manifest in ways of oppression. So a lot of times our families, when they go to report someone missing, they are not believed, a lot of times a woman reporting a sexual assault, they are not believed, or deaths are considered explosion. She got really drunk and she just died somewhere and not acknowledging the psychical violence she experienced that left her in a field in the freezing cold.”

These women say Gabby Petito's case is not only a reminder of why this office is so crucial in Minnesota, but also how it can be adopted in every other state.

“The response that Gabby Petitio received is the response that all of us deserve," Matthews said.

“But I think we’re entering a time now where we’re demanding that there is some accountability and some equity in the way that these systems work in our country. Systems that we designed to eliminate us as the original people of this land," Cummings said.

“Minnesota has obviously made this a priority and recognizes this is an investment in our communities now but like we say in the Native communities, investment in the next seven generations to come," Kunesh said.

In the months before Mary Johnson disappeared, her sister said she wasn't herself.

Johnson and her husband, who had been living in the home of her sister Gerry Davis in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, abruptly left and moved to Marysville about 40 miles away, Davis said. She rarely answered her phone when Davis called, and only occasionally responded to texts. Then one day, Johnson's estranged husband contacted Davis to say he hadn't seen his wife in weeks.

The last time anyone said they saw Mary Johnson — also known as Mary Davis — was on Nov. 25, 2020. Johnson, an enrolled citizen of the Tulalip Tribes and then 39 years old, was walking on a road in Western Washington, en route to the house of some friends in a nearby town. She never made it there.

It's been nearly 10 months since Johnson was reported missing. A billboard on Interstate 5 and local media coverage have yielded few credible tips, and tribal police have yet to make an arrest in the case. Only last week did the FBI announce it would offer a reward of up to $10,000 for information about Johnson's disappearance. While family members and advocates welcome the move, they also wonder what took so long.

"If that was a little white girl out there or a white woman, I'm sure they would have had helicopters, airplanes and dogs and searches — a lot of manpower out there — scouring where that person was lost," Nona Blouin, Johnson's older sister, said. "None of that has happened for our sister."

Those feelings ring especially true this week, as the case of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito captured the attention of the internet. Meanwhile, at least 710 Indigenous people — more than half of them women or girls — were reported missing between 2011 and September 2020 in Wyoming, where Petito's remains were found this week, according to a University of Wyoming report. While about half were usually found within a week of going missing, as per the report, family members and advocates said none received the same level of media coverage nor the same urgency in law enforcement's response as missing white people.

Too often, that means families like Johnson's are left waiting without answers.

Johnson's disappearance remains unsolved

There's a lot unknown about the circumstances under which Johnson disappeared last year.

The following sequence of events, based on a CNN interview with Tulalip Tribal Police Department Detective David Sallee and a local news report in The Everett Herald, is what authorities have pieced together based on cell phone records and conversations with people who saw her.

At the time Johnson disappeared, she and her husband weren't in a good place, Sallee said. She was staying mostly with friends, returning to the couple's shared house every few days to pick up her mail and take a shower before heading out again.

On Nov. 24, a day before she was last seen, Sallee said her estranged husband dropped her off with a suitcase at a friend's house on the Tulalip reservation. Johnson stayed there overnight, and planned the next day to head to the house of a couple she knew in Oso about 30 miles away.

The friend she was staying with was supposed to give her a ride to a nearby church, where someone else would pick her up and take her to the couple's house in Oso. A second man, who had been staying at the same house as Johnson, wanted a ride, too.

But things went awry on Nov. 25, and Sallee said Johnson's friend backtracked on the offer to give her and the second man a ride. Johnson set out toward the church on foot around 1:30 p.m., and the second man also started walking away from the house.

A third man who was set to pick Johnson up at the church and take her to Oso eventually drove by and saw her walking on Fire Trail Road with the man who also wanted a ride, Sallee said. He indicated he only had enough room in his vehicle for one person and kept on going, ultimately declining to give her a ride.

Johnson never made it to the couple's house in Oso, Sallee said. But before she disappeared she left that couple a voicemail, desperation in her voice as she urged them to pick up, according to records obtained by The Everett Herald. She also made another call around 2:30 p.m. — the woman who picked up reportedly said to police that she told Johnson she was too busy to speak.

Police believe that someone may have picked Johnson up at some point, because cell phone records indicate that about an hour after her last call, her phone connected to a tower in the Oso area — too great a distance for her to have walked so quickly. The phone then went offline for a period of time, Sallee said, before again connecting to a tower in the Greater Marysville Tulalip area that night. It remained in that location until the next morning, when it eventually powered off.

The man who was supposed to pick Johnson up from the church reportedly told police that he hadn't seen or heard from her since Nov. 25. The man who had been walking with her said the two went their separate ways and that he'd had no sign of her either.

On Dec. 9, 2020, Johnson's estranged husband reported her missing.

In the nearly 10 months since, there has been little movement in the investigation, which Sallee said remains "open and active." He said the police department had identified multiple persons of interest, though it has yet to make an arrest.

Because a body hasn't been recovered, Sallee said it's difficult to establish the probable cause necessary to seek specific search warrants. Because Johnson's disappearance was reported weeks after the fact, he said surveillance footage or precise location information that could offer clues has likely been overwritten. And because authorities don't know for sure whether Johnson disappeared on or off the reservation, he said it's unclear whether they can leverage federal grand jury subpoena powers or not.

"We don't know if she was kidnapped, held against her will, if she has been murdered. It could be argued maybe she just wandered off in the woods and got lost. Maybe she overdosed and passed away somewhere in a remote area and we don't know where she's at. Maybe she's just hiding, maybe she's in treatment," Sallee said. "There's a lot of maybes."

Authorities are often slow to act, advocates say

To advocates who work on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, however, such challenges and uncertainties come off as excuses.

Abigail Echo-Hawk, chief research officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board and an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, says one of the primary barriers in addressing this crisis is the "maze of jurisdiction" in Indian Country. Cases of missing Indigenous women are often mired in bureaucracy, with prosecutors and law enforcement having to establish whether the authority rests with the federal government, the state or the tribe. The time it takes to determine the jurisdiction of a case can ultimately affect whether those women live or die, she said.

"This maze of jurisdiction that exists — that is, who does what investigations and who's responsible for what — is part of this system of inequity," Echo-Hawk said.

It's why so many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women remain unsolved, says Annita Lucchesi, executive director of the research group Sovereign Bodies Institute and a descendant of the Cheyenne tribe. Jurisdictional issues can limit tribal authorities from successfully prosecuting non-Native people for crimes committed on tribal lands except in some cases, and the federal government -- who typically does have that authority -- has often declined to act.

Another piece of the problem, as some advocates see it, is that Indigenous women are often blamed for their own disappearances, resulting in a lack of empathy for victims from authorities and the general public.

"They are assumed to have been killed, murdered or disappeared. They're assumed to have run away, to have had substance abuse issues, to have done something that caused them to go missing or to be murdered," Echo-Hawk said.

Those attitudes only perpetuate the problem and make it easier for perpetrators to avoid accountability, Lucchesi said.

"That kind of narrative about Indigenous people just lends itself to more violence so that when this violence does happen, it's not a disruption of the social fabric the way it would be when it happens to somebody else," she said. "Because we're already perceived as not part of the social fabric, because we're either dead and disappeared. We're less than human. We're so far away on some remote reservation that we're not part of the rest of the community."

The full scale of the problem is unknown

Johnson is just one of countless missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls in the U.S. — a nationwide crisis for which there are no definitive statistics.

The numbers that do exist are likely an undercount, in part because Indigenous women and girls are sometimes misclassified as white, Hispanic or Asian. Adding to the data problem is a historic distrust of law enforcement by Indigenous communities, which can lead some cases to go unreported.

About 1,500 missing persons cases of American Indian and Alaska Native people have been recorded across the U.S. by the National Crime Information Center, while approximately 2,700 homicide cases have been reported to the federal government's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

A database maintained by Lucchesi's Sovereign Bodies Institute puts the count higher, with more than 4,500 cases of missing Indigenous women and girls dating back to the 1900s, she said. There are nine such cases just in her own family, Lucchesi said.

"That shadow of death is always there," she added.

That's why advocates are pushing leaders and policymakers to do something about the issue.

The attorney general in Washington state, where Johnson was last seen and which has the second highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women cases, announced a 21-member task force to examine the systemic inequities behind the problem of missing Indigenous women and girls. Echo-Hawk's organization recently completed a project in the state with the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, reforming database systems and training staff to properly collect racial identity and tribal affiliation information for victims. And on the national level, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a new unit earlier this year that would investigate the killings and disappearances of Indigenous people.

Advocates say such actions, however, are just a first step.

"There has to be money allocated. It can't just be a checkbox for some politicians [to say], 'We did this,'" Echo-Hawk said. "It has to be more than that."

The New Mexico Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives task force is still figuring out ways to solve missing cases. A big part of this is making sure a lot of these cases are known.

The MMIWR Task Force Project Coordinator, Jessica Gidagaakoons Smith said, “Family members who have share their stories of the issues that they have been facing or they have faced in the past and that is helping us to better formally ideas on legislation.”

In a 2017 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute, New Mexico is the state with the highest number of MMIW cases.

Smith said one thing to overcome is the attention that missing person cases get.

“It's crucial especially if somebody is missing today. Do you know if someone goes missing today I believe that it is very crucial to get any type of coverage of that missing person out,” Smith said.

Smith said the response for cases like Gabby Petito is far different from how MMIWR cases are investigated.

"It could really make a huge difference for our people. I meant she was found in like 8 days I think it was," Smith added. "We don't see that with many cases of our MMIWR."

Johnson's family hasn't given up hope

Johnson's sisters, Davis and Blouin, are trying to stay positive — though they're also mentally preparing for the worst.

They're heartened by all the people who have shared the poster with Johnson's picture on their social media accounts. They're asking everyone to keep their eyes out for a 5-foot-6, 115 pound woman with black hair and brown eyes, a sunburst tattoo on her upper right arm and a beauty mark on the back of her neck. And they want law enforcement to deploy every possible resource at their disposal -- because Native women deserve the same respect and compassion as anyone else.

"My sister is a wonderful person and we all love her dearly," Blouin said. "If you have any information, please just reach out to your local law enforcement, the Seattle FBI or the Tulalip PD. Bring her home. We miss her."

KOAT contributed to this report.