a day ago
Native American group leader traveling to AZ to spread awareness on missing indigenous people
The Brief
Keely Birdtail, a Cherokee Comanche native, is traveling to Arizona from Indiana.
She is spreading awareness on the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP)
PHOENIX - An Indiana woman rode all the way out to eastern Arizona to spread awareness about Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.
"I left Indiana four weeks ago on a mission to start spreading awareness for MMIW/MMIC/MMIP," said Keely Birdtail.
The backstory
Birdtail is a Cherokee Comanche native who is originally from Oklahoma. She started a group called Missing One Society, which is a motorcycle group dedicated to helping Indigenous people with missing relatives.
Her destination was the San Carlos Apache Reservation, where she met with the family of Emily Pike to discuss her unsolved murder. Birdtail says Emily's murder has reopened the conversation that could help Native tribes across the country.
What Birdtail Said
"We need to spread the word, and let her be the catalyst of us uniting together as one tribe instead of all these little tribes," said Birdtail.
Birdtail says her background as a mentor at Native American juvenile detention centers gave her insight into what teens like Emily are faced with.
"I really got to the full aspect of what their lives were like and how they could've quickly went into something like this," Birdtail said.
What's next
Birdtail says she hopes to start up grief counseling and life coaching for Indigenous youth across the nation, but hopes the bigger message is that solving Emily's murder and other unsolved Indigenous murders will take more than just her.
"I'm just a drop in the ocean, like I said before," said Birdtail. "With all of us, we become the ocean. We can do this, we can cause, we can get some justice, we can get some answers, maybe we can get some things done as a group."
What you can do
The reward in Emily Pike's case has increased to $175,000. If you have any information, you're asked to call the FBI's tipline at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
