I don’t remember how long ago I met Lily Mendoza. I was working with Ruth Yellowhawk on a youth listening circle project for suicide awareness and prevention. My role in the project was minor. The principle listening circle participants were Lakota youth and elders who came together to understand and to seek solutions to incredibly high rates of youth suicide among indigenous youth in South Dakota. In the conversations that surrounded the planning for the listening circles, I mentioned that a distant relative on my father’s side of the family had been a photographer who chronicled settlement in southeastern Montana. L.A. Huffman photographs are on display in several locations in and around Crow, Cheyenne and Lakota reservations. Not long after that conversation, Ruth introduced me to Lily Mendoza, who was working at a local bookstore. They showed me a book that contained many L.A. Huffman photographs. The book also contained several inappropriate and painful photographs of indigenous women. There were cards with photographs of native women that circulated in the mining camps. It has been said that these cards sold for more than a night with a prostitute in Deadwood.

The problem with L.A. Huffman wasn’t that he took those photographs of indigenous women. There is no evidence that he did. He was, however, addicted to alcohol and perpetually out of money. As a result he sold the rights to his photographs that subsequently appeared in collections with the work of other photographers. My conversation with Lily Mendoza was enlightening, to say the least. She knew a lot more about my ancestor than I did. I ended up writing a review of the book for the bookstore owners recommending that they cease selling the book as it contributed to the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota women and families.

Lily Mendoza is now the owner of Bird Cage Book Store and Mercantile in Rapid City. It is the best place to find rare and regional Native American books. Mendoza is an expert in the literature of the plains and the work of indigenous authors.

If you were to go to the Bird Cage Book Store, you would find Lily Mendoza wearing a face mask with a red hand printed on it. If you asked her about that hand, you would hear about another tragic and ongoing horror of the attempted genocide of indigenous people in our country. There is widespread anger and sadness among the communities of indigenous people on and off of reservations. Sisters, wives, mothers, and daughters are gone from their families without clear answers. Family after family is experiencing the trauma of the loss of mothers, daughters, grandmothers and aunts. Across the United States and Canada there are thousands of unsolved cases. When a Native woman is reported missing, law enforcement agencies often do not take the report seriously, and do little to assist. The media rarely picks up on a story of a missing Native woman and when it does, it often blames the victim, telling the story in a negative light.

Lily Mendoza has been active in the Red Ribbon Skirt Society seeking to bring healing to communities who have experienced the loss of women. Together with the Red Ribbon Skirt Society, she has opened the MMIW Center for Healing, Prayer and Remembrance - a space upstairs from the Bird Cage Book Store and Mercantile where people can gather to honor and grieve the people who have been lost.

I can’t help but think of Lily and her powerful message about the pain of indigenous communities as I read the persistent headlines in the past week about what has turned out to be the murder of van life blogger, Gabby Petito. Virtually every news web site has carried multiple articles about the woman who was reported missing on September 10 and whose body was discovered near Grand Teton National Park. The case seems to have captured the imagination of the nation. The tragedy is real. Her family is suffering unimaginable trauma with the loss of their daughter.

I’ve seen pictures of large teams of law enforcement agents searching the home of the parents of her boyfriend and conducting a search for his whereabouts. I’ve read about the FBI agents who are conducting the search. This is a crime that is not being ignored by law enforcement or by the media.

It must seem unfair to someone like Lily Mendoza, who has been working tirelessly for decades in search of justice and healing for the families of missing and murdered indigenous women.

In 2016 there were 5,712 cases of missing and murdered Native American and Alaska Native women. Only 116 of those cases were logged into the Department of Justice Database. It has been estimated that U.S. Attorneys have declined to prosecute 67% of native community incidents involving sexual abuse. More than half of all Native American women will experience physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. In 97% of reported cases, native women were the victims of non-native aggressors. In South Dakota Native American women are murdered at a rate of 10 times the national average.

The pain and loss is overwhelming. In the midst of all of this there are a few courageous persons who are seeking to bring healing and justice and to decrease the amount of violence against native women. So if you want to ask Lily Mendoza about the red handprint on her face mask, be prepared to listen to her answer. If it is hard for you to hear the stories she tells, imagine how hard it is for the communities who continue to experience violence and loss and then be ignored by law enforcement and the media.

All of this doesn’t erase the tragedy of Gabby Petito. It is real. The pain of her loved ones is real. Their lives have been forever changed by their loss. However, as we watch her case play out in the media we should also remember that 86% of indigenous families have experienced the loss of a loved one to violence.

There is a lot of pain. The need for healing is great.