There is some merit to those thoughts. According to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, the homicide rate for Indigenous women and girls in the US is six times higher than it is for white women and girls, and 94% of cases are attributable to former or current partners. But the severity of this mostly flies under the radar. Half of Indigenous homicide reports are missing from FBI data, the center says, meaning many lives lost are ignored in much of the official counting. Advertisement When Indigenous women are reported missing, less effort is put into finding them across the board, numbers suggest. In Wyoming, where the remains of Petito were found eight days after she was reported missing, white people are found in 81% of cases after a week of being declared missing, compared to only 61% of Indigenous people in the same timeframe – a difference of 20%. Laws protecting Indigenous rights in the US, which gives power to tribal courts and federal courts, but not state courts, can complicate matters too. Deb Haaland said media coverage of the death of Petito should be a reminder of the Native American women who are missing or murdered. Deb Haaland said media coverage of the death of Petito should be a reminder of the Native American women who are missing or murdered. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP At the end of 2019, two months after 17-year-old Faith Lindsey went missing in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, her boyfriend, Tanner Washington, was arrested for first-degree murder by local authorities after being found with Lindsey’s blood on his shoes, pants and phone. But charges were later dismissed because of the alleged crime happening on tribal land. While federal charges were brought this year, the trial has yet to happen, and Faith’s body was never found – meaning she is yet another Indigenous woman unaccounted for in official femicide counts while her family awaits answers. “It’s a hard time because not knowing where she’s at, not knowing if she’s still here or if she’s gone. We don’t know,” her sister Justice said last fall. While nationwide homicide data for 2020 and 2021 have yet to be released, anecdotal evidence suggests the problem got worse during the lockdowns associated with the Covid-19 epidemic. Advertisementhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Chiefsvchargerlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Chiefsvchargerslve/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Chargersvchiefsnfl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Patriotsvsaintslivest/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Patriotsvsaintslive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Saintsvpatriotslive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Falconsvgiantslivenow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Giantsvfalconslivest/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coltsvtitansnfllive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Steelersbengalsliveon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bengalsvsteelerslivst/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coltsvtitanslivest/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Titansvcoltslivest/ Scott Colom, a district attorney in north-east Mississippi, tells me there has been an undeniable uptick in domestic violence incidents. In the last four months alone, in the relatively small four-county area he serves, where the population is about 140,000, three Black women have been killed, with current or former intimate partners facing charges. Their names were Lisa Brooks, Whitney Taylor and Kaliyah Brooks. Of all the women captured in FBI homicide data, Black women and girls are being murdered by male offenders at a rate of almost three times more than white women. Colom says part of the problem is how the system addresses daily occurrences of domestic violence incidents before they turn lethal. He explains that with the strengthening of violence against women laws, including mandatory arrest laws, arrests are almost certain when someone is accused of domestic violence. But as the system focuses on arrests, charges and convictions, the victim’s needs and wishes are paradoxically often brushed to the side. As things stand, after a complaint or an arrest, there is no formal follow-up with an accuser, and in the months in between an arrest being made and them being bid to court, the accuser has very often dropped charges. This happens because the accuser may rely on the accused for money or housing, because he may be the father of her children, or because she is emotionally attached to him and doesn’t want to be the cause for him going to jail.