4-year-old Oregon report identifies missing Native American women as an ‘emergency’ — but progress has been limited
Main recommendations remain unfinished, governor has not read the report, and critics say Indigenous voices have been left out.
Carolyn DeFord was hoping for change. She was hoping for answers. She’s been hoping for 24 years.
It was Feb. 18, 2019, and DeFord was making the long trip from her home in central Washington to Oregon — a drive she had made many times to search for her missing mother, Leona Kinsey, who disappeared from her home in La Grande, Oregon, in 1998. This time the drive was different. DeFord was traveling to testify in the Oregon Capitol.
A first-of-its-kind bill in Oregon would declare missing Native American women a statewide emergency, launch an investigation into the crisis and produce a report designed to decipher the underpinnings of the problem.
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