Families of murdered Natives desperately need resources, closure

Posoh ("hello" in Menominee) and wāewāenen ("thank you") for reading the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter.

One of the hardest and most emotional parts of my job is interviewing loved ones of missing or murdered victims who are desperately seeking their loved one or justice.

A person cannot help but feel some of their pain.

I had just started working this Indigenous news beat in Green Bay when Katelyn Kelley, 22, was reported missing by her family from the Menominee Reservation. Her mother and other family members came to our office in downtown Green Bay to help get the word out. I remember she didn’t have enough flyers to post around Green Bay, so I made her some copies in our office.

Menominee tribal police and the FBI recovered Kelley’s body on March 17, 2021 on the Menominee Reservation. A $15,000 reward is being offered for information leading the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for her death.

An article published this week in the Journal Sentinel describes how children are trying to raise money for new DNA testing in the unsolved case of their mother, Susan Poupart, was murdered on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in 1990.

The DNA testing at a private lab they hope to use apparently has superior technology to the state-run lab.

These are just two of the hundreds, or even thousands, of unsolved missing and murdered cases throughout Indian Country.

It strikes me how it appears so few resources are available to help the families.

Kelley’s family didn’t even have enough flyers to go around. And Poupart’s family is having to raise their own money just to have DNA testing done, which is something many people might agree should be done by law enforcement, anyway, if they had the right resources.

All these cases deserve the attention and the resources they need to help solve them.

It also strikes me that when Gabby Petito went missing in 2021, it seemed scores of law enforcement were dedicated to finding her. In a search that garnered national attention, it took 10 days to find her body in Wyoming — a state where there are also scores of missing Indigenous people. Her fiancé later died by suicide, admitting he was responsible for her death.

In the course of investigating the Petito case, police discovered the remains of at least nine victims from other cases. None of them drew the same kind of attention when they happened.

If you like this newsletter, please invite a friend to subscribe to it . And if you have tips or suggestions for this newsletter, please email me at fvaisvilas@gannett.com .

About me

I'm Frank Vaisvilas, the Indigenous affairs reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . I cover Native American issues in Wisconsin. You can reach me at 815-260-2262 or fvaisvilas@gannett.com , or on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank .

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Families of murdered Natives desperately need resources, closure