Native Americans Grapple With Record Missing Persons

As the special, weeklong NBC News series “The Vanished,” focusing on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, continues, Morgan Radford travels to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana to talk to one family whose 3-year-old daughter went missing four months ago and still has not been found.

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31 Comments

    1. @Wicked Tree Farm Gender doesn’t matter. Any kid can be okay with it or be bothered by it. The child being a girl is completely irrelevant, and it doesn’t mean she’s going to be bothered by it. Do you actually think that their gender determines how they react to it?

    3. Lots of people. How do you think people take their child hunting and teach them to hunt? Only thing that matters is gun safety. As long as the people know how to use guns and respect the gun, there’s no problems with it.

    4. @CHIEF TAHCHAWWICKAH the only thing I work to save is abandoned pets. I wish you well.

    5. @maddie r I’m not sure if you are just trying to start an argument or what. I’m going off what I’ve seen raising my kids, nieces, nephews, and grandkids. Of course it can be completely opposite and the boys, am I allowed to call them that?, may not like the loud noises and the girls love the guns. I was a tomboy myself and I’m married to a man who cooks and I do woodworking. He gets excited over cooking utensils and I get giddy when I buy a new saw. I’ve raised both boys and girls to love insects and think bloody stuff is cool – or at least tried, both my kids have weak stomach when I clean a wound on a farm animal. But typically it’s the boys who like to blow stuff up and destroy stuff. Girls have more a nurture nature. I still feel bad about the stink bugs I tied to bottle rockets as a kid. Just my observation.

  5. This REALLY bothers me. Personally I think it’s scary and disgusting, people don’t just disappear. Did you hear those numbers?? How? Why? This is devastating and my heart hurts for these people and this community. I pray as a world, a planet, we do better. We have got to do better, for our children, and their children. So much heartache.

    1. @CHIEF TAHCHAWWICKAH I meant your original land and sovereignty was conquered in America centuries ago… and then US tried to right their wrongs by setting up reservations for your people… you’re not conquered now I agree

    2. @CHIEF TAHCHAWWICKAH again, I meant no shade Chief like I wrote I admit my naivety and ignorance on this and was looking for an informative conversation. No shade. I really respect and truly appreciate your culture and think it’s beautiful and have thought how lovely it would be to be part of such a community with such solidarity and support amongst its members looking out for each other

      We are missing community and connection with nature and spirit and culture so much now in the US and it’s apparent in society I feel and not working out well overall

    3. @CHIEF TAHCHAWWICKAH I feel reservations were an attempt to make things right… I see how they are extremely limiting… extremely… and not anything like the freedoms your people had before… I will contemplate this more as this is the type of feedback and reality check reminder I was looking for. Thank you for the feedback

    5. @JinAK the reservations were a way to get the Native Americans out of the way and corral them.

  7. Help me with my naivety on this issue- aren’t Native Americans set up to kind of be their own sovereign nations/lands within the United States? Do they want government regulation and protection and oversight or not? Or they want the best of both worlds- protection and not all the other regulations that the rest of the US live by?… I realize this is a very touchy issue with our history with indigenous peoples and conquering their land…

    I’m really looking for insight on this… not hate… as I realize I’m a bit ignorant on the topic… and I can look into it more myself too to educate myself. Thx

    And my heart does go out to their whole culture and all the systemic problems they have at this point…

    I’ve been starting to read up on Matriarchal societies and there’s lots of research being done on that and it really seems the way to get back to for peaceful unified society… it impressed me as I didn’t really understand it until a friend introduced me to some work on it and it really did work historically, and still does where it’s still in play

    1. Unfortunately they get the worst of both worlds. There can be corruption in their tribal counsels and often local law enforcement resents the tribal police and goes out of their way to make things difficult for them. I’m not talking in every situation but it does occur. They have federal over site with serious crimes being investigated by the FBI but I’m not sure if they have to be invited or how that works. There are a lot of distrust between people on both sides of the reservation. Our cops pull Natives over and search their car for no reason.I just witnessed it Wednesday from my work. Two cops cars, searched them and let them go. Just recently, there was a car that swiped a unoccupied parked car. An undercover officer chased them, there were three people, two men, and one woman that fled on foot, all Natives, one man shot the officer in the arm. It was very hush hush. That was a month ago, just this week the names of the Natives were released. One man was killed in the incident but his cause of death was listed as an accident in his obituary. That’s it, the whole story. Maybe the shooter felt trapped and killed himself but who knows? I tried to flag down 4 cop cars at 1am to help a Native that was upset and drunk because he had been left at the alter. It was 17 degrees out and
      4 cop cars kept driving by me. I hoped they would give him a ride to his home on the reservation since I didn’t know him, I just heard him crying on the sidewalk outside my work. NOT ONE cop would stop. I told him I’d take him home even though I knew it was dumb for a woman to take a stranger home in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t let me and walked off. I followed him in my truck to ask him again because where he was going to walk was about 5 miles in the dark. He just walked home. The whole system sucks.

  8. Joe. You are in the white House to cancel the key stone pipeline,  PRINT money, apply HIGH taxes . You called to SURGE  the border,  HIGH gas prices. Keep your promises. Leave Cuba alone just SEND tax payer money over to that land like every other country. Just blame Milley for the decision. Go to white house channel leave a thumbs up or  thumbs down . Promises kept joe. And do not take any questions.

  9. The whole story about the guns doesn’t sound right. Who would bring a 3 year old to the wood while they practice shooting. The police should be involved questioning the babysitter first.

    1. People bring their children hunting all the time. As long as they understand gun safety, there’s no problem with it.

    1. I am appalled by some of the finger pointing in these comments. Judging an issue without all the facts, how rude, how self righteous.
      The Western USA is vast, I’ve seen almost all of the Indian reservations. They are a perfect landscape for bad characters to harm others. I have a foster sis and bro, the attitude in the comments sounded cruel to me.

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