13-year-old girl last seen in Denver on June 19 prompts missing-persons investigation

Isabelle Butera, Nora Mabie and Derek Catron, USA TODAY
Updated ·2 min read
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An teen girl from Colorado was declared missing nearly 10 days after she was last seen in Denver, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Jordan Tafoya, 13, was last seen about 12 p.m. on June 19 at an undisclosed location in Denver.

Police described Jordan as 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 185 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

Investigators said Jordan is affiliated with the Northern Arapahoe Tribe.

The CBI tweeted an alert Wednesday declaring Jordan as missing.

Anyone with information about Jordan's whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Denver Police Department at 720-913-7867.

Missing indigenous women

Thousands of Indigenous women go missing and are murdered at disproportionately high rates compared with other ethnic groups.

The FBI’s National Crime Information Center reported 5,203 missing Indigenous girls and women in 2021, disappearing at a rate equal to more than two and a half times their estimated share of the U.S. population. The real rate is likely higher; the total was deemed an undercount in an October report to Congress because of a lack of comprehensive federal data.

Nobody knows how many missing or murdered Indigenous women there are, but it’s enough to have its own acronym: MMIW. That stands for Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) (or in this case, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)).

President Joe Biden described it as an “epidemic” and for Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to label it a crisis while calling for more federal action.

In seeking explanations for the problem, activists for missing or murdered Indigenous women point to centuries of colonial trauma and prejudicial or ineffective government policies. These entrenched within Indigenous communities higher rates of poverty, substance and domestic abuse, and other social ills that contribute to Indigenous women having a lower life expectancy rate than other groups.

'My daughter is missing' New laws fail to shield Indigenous women from higher murder rates

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jordan Tafoya, Indigenous teen girl from Denver declared missing