Letoya Hobson, a 15-year-old Native American, was born on July Fourth in 2007. She has been missing since June 21, 2022. She is described as 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 120 pounds, according to Capt. Kevin Burns of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.
Burns recently provided The Durango Herald and The Journal with a list of people from unincorporated San Juan County who had been reported missing from 1989 to 2017. Four out of nine listed are classified as American Indian or Alaska Native.
In 2022, there is one missing or runaway teen.
More than 5,700 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing as of 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center, but only 116 of those cases were lodged with the Department of Justice. Eighty-four percent of Native women experience violence in their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice, and women in some tribal communities have been 10 times more likely to be murdered than the national average..
Statistics from New Mexico Indian Affairs Department validate the perception that Indigenous populations in the Four Corners go missing more often than people of other ethnic backgrounds.
In New Mexico, advocates for victims of abuse in New Mexico have stepped up their efforts for help, asking tribal leaders, the Department of Justice and law enforcement for increased resources and support for victims of abuse.
Former Navajo President Johnathan Nez and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham have spotlighted the problem.
Grisham established the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force Act with House Bill 278 in 2019.
Nez on Oct. 28 issued an executive order to investigate cases of missing people in a way that’s more empathetic to victims and families.
Nez and other tribal leaders met with FBI officials and prosecutors from Arizona, New Mexico and Utah for the plan’s signing ceremony. Although officials from the Navajo Nation were unavailable for this article, their previously stated goal is to establish a template for the Navajo Nation to share data across local, state and federal jurisdictions and to collaborate on cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
Where to find help
Navajo Nation shelter: (435) 678-0249.
Shiprock (New Mexico): (505) 368-1157.
Tohdenasshai (Arizona): (928) 697-3635.
Battered Families (New Mexico): (505) 722-7483.
Family Crisis Center: (New Mexico): (505) 325-3549.
Now, advocates Etta Arivso and Christine Benally, who traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2019 to present a resolution seeking greater accountability in handling cases of domestic violence and missing people, continue to seek additional resources.
Benally said the law used by the Navajo Nation is taken from the Bureau of Indian Affairs 25-CFR. “It doesn’t really provide adequate resources, consultation, care, justice for the victims,” Benally said. Title 17 was amended but “it didn’t go far enough” she said.
Inadequate resources are the real issue, according to Benally. “The perpetrators go walking because the cases go to federal court and a lot of them get declined,” she asserted.
Factors such as substance abuse and violent behavior witnessed by young children perpetuates a generational cycle and “becomes normalized,” she said.
Benally said that “historical trauma” caused by children being removed from the family and sent to boarding schools was a factor. “They don’t learn how to be a parent, to relate to brothers and sisters … all the family dynamics and caring for each other was stripped away,” she said.
”Benally, Arviso and Gina Lopez of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Towaoc, Colorado, hope to meet with newly elected Navajo President Buu Nygren and the Tribal Council about the incarceration of Native people in federal prisons.
They plan to find out whether the Navajo Nation sought or received some of the $50 million in funding designated for legal assistance for victims that was awarded by the Department of Justice in August.
People of all ethnic backgrounds disappear for various reasons, but the rate for Indigenous people appears disproportionate. Family disputes can lead to a sense of alienation. Of course, disparate views about money, possessions, obligations – even politics – may cause a desire to separate from others.
People sometimes disappear due to trauma or health issues. But the nightmarish specter of violence always looms. And when young people go missing the alarm bells clang unrelentingly in the ears of loved ones.
The problems begin in the family but something must be done to help them, Benally said.
Arviso said a 110-point resolution was presented to her Chapter Council Delegates but was disregarded. She said she’s been working on victims rights ever since she was “battered” in 1999. “It took about five months to get myself back on my feet,” she said. “I worked two jobs and became a fighter.”
The experience taught her that Navajo Nation government needs to change. She discovered there were no domestic violence laws in place, and she considers her marriage at age 14 child abuse because it was not by choice.
Her mission became to help women involved in domestic abuse. She distributes fliers for the Victim Advocacy Program with hope that those in distress will respond and find assistance.
“You don’t totally, completely heal,” she said.
The question of jurisdiction
The question of jurisdiction – who has official power to make legal decisions and judgments – has been an obstacle to prosecution. These issues arise when Indigenous people are victimized or go missing in “Indian Country.”
“Broadly speaking, Indian Country is all the land under the supervision of the federal government that has been set aside primarily for the use of Indians,” the Administration for Native Americans website states. “This includes all land within an Indian reservation and all land outside a reservation that has been placed under federal superintendence and designated primarily for Indian use.”
As a general rule, state laws do not apply in Indian Country.
In July, the FBI’s office in Albuquerque released a list of missing Indigenous people in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation as part of a larger project to track missing people on the Navajo Nation. On Oct. 11, the list it included 192 names.
FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said the genesis of the project was the New Mexico Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force.
“We have been able to bring closure to many families worried about their loved ones,” he said. “We also have added missing persons to the list, which means law enforcement all across the nation are looking for them.”
The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced the opening of the FY 2022 Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation period. Known as CTAS, the funding under this initiative is available to assist American Indian and Alaska Native communities in crime prevention, victim services and coordinated community responses to violence against native women.
Native Hope, based in Chamberlain, South Dakota, is working to help reduce the disproportionate percentage of Indigenous women and children who are victims of human trafficking. In February, it announced it would fund for three years a specialist’s job created by the South Dakota attorney general’s office to help with a “communication and coordination gap” that exists between tribal police and various agencies and jurisdictions.
