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The case of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito came to a tragic conclusion this week when the FBI reported her body had been found in a US national park in Wyoming. And just as they had been during the frantic search for the young woman, news organizations and social media platforms across the US were buzzing with the terrible update.
The saga highlighted the incredible power of media attention to showcase a missing person’s case and help it reach some type of timely resolution, no matter how dire, though the search for Petito’s killer continues. But for many in the Indigenous community, it also further emphasized the lack of attention and resources too often given to the scores of missing and murdered Native people in Wyoming and the rest of the country.
In a Wyoming report released earlier this year, researchers found that between 2011 and September 2020, 710 Indigenous people were reported missing statewide, and that between 2000 and 2020, Indigenous homicide victims accounted for 21% of all homicides, despite only making up 3% of the state’s population
Despite such staggering statistics, the report, a first of its kind for Wyoming, found that white homicide victims were more likely to receive media coverage compared to Native people. And when Native cases did receive media attention, articles were more likely to include violent language or portray them in a negative light, compared with those about white victims.
“We’ve seen the stories, talked with families that are sad and hurt that this is the way that their loved one was portrayed,” said Emily Grant, senior research scientist at Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center, who led research on this report. “But it was heartbreaking, to...