Trisha Etringer and Jess Lopez-Walker lost their aunt, Paulette Walker, to the MMIW crisis.
A small postcard is the last thing that Jess Lopez-Walker’s family received from her aunt.
Paulette ‘Paulie’ Walker of the Winnebago Tribe sent it after moving to California with a boyfriend in 1984. The family never heard from her again. Lopez-Walker said her aunt’s disappearance left a hole in the family — especially for her mother.
“When they were younger, they used to tickle each other's lips and face when they're getting ready to sleep,” Lopez-Walker said. “And when my mom sleeps, she does that to herself. When you watch her, you know she's missing a part of her.”
Last year, more than 5,000 Native women were reported as missing across the country. Murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s a national public health crisis, known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, that has also touched Iowa’s Indigenous communities. Local Native communities across Iowa are coming together to find justice for their relatives and to prevent more women from falling to the epidemic.
Over the last four years, Native Americans made up 1.5 percent of missing persons cases in iowa, but only a little more than half of a percent of the state's population, according to 2020 census data. There are four active cases of Native women and girls still missing today.
To Trisha Etringer, those numbers are unacceptable.
“Native women and girls, our relatives, are not expendable,” Etringer said. “We are human beings.”
Etringer is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) director at the Great Plains Action Society, a statewide organization devoted to addressing Native issues. She’s part of a team of Native Americans in Sioux City who have been leading efforts to raise awareness on the public health crisis through workshops and panels.
Etringer said her organization is trying to break a trend of violence against Indigenous women that began with colonialism. She said she wants to build a community task force, devoted to undoing its impact.
“Because if we don't, it's just gonna keep continuing. And so we have the power, us, as Native communities, have that power to create those solutions.”
In October, Sioux City residents crowded into a small room at the Urban Native Center, their attention rapt on a flier of a missing Native woman, Brenda Payer.
Organizers passed out the posters, shouting out streets and parts of town that still needed searching. The Great Plains Action Society coordinated the search party to bring attention to the case and help ease the worries of the family.
One of the organizers, Josh Taylor, said it’s important to take a proactive approach to elevate the stories of missing Indigenous women.
“We have a relationship with law enforcement where they know we're not trying to impede their investigation or step on their toes,” Taylor said. “We're solely there to help both sides.”
Through mutual aid efforts, the organization helps families touched by the MMIW crisis by paying legal fees, funding travel to look for loved ones, and, in the worst cases, planning memorials.
Taylor said he hopes it can aid families in, what he knows personally, as a situation of great fear. His aunt, Terri McCauley of the Omaha tribe, was murdered in Sioux City in 1983. Her case remains unsolved to this day.
His own experience of watching his family struggle for answers inspires him to help others.
“I don't want them to go through what my family has gone through for years,” he said. “We're going to do everything within our power to help them and ease their pain, and whatever discomfort they have.”