Rally at Wisconsin Capitol calls for end to 'epidemic' of violence against Indigenous women, girls
MADISON - Kozee Decorah. Katelyn Kelley. Rae Elaine Tourtillott. Tess White.
Their names were spoken aloud and their lives remembered outside the state Capitol in Madison on Thursday.
They are all Indigenous women from Wisconsin who went missing and were found dead, the victims of either confirmed or possible homicides and part of what has been called a crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls.
"This epidemic of missing and murdered Native women and girls must stop," said Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge Munsee Community, one of the 11 federally recognized tribal Nations in Wisconsin. "It’s not a tribal, singular endeavor. It is an everybody endeavor."
She spoke before a crowd of red-clad onlookers, some with red handprints painted over their mouths. Red has become a symbol of the international Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s movement.
The effort seeks to raise awareness of Indigenous people who go missing and to find solutions to the high rates of violence faced by Indigenous people, especially women and girls. Thursday was the national day of awareness for the issue.
More: 'My daughter is missing': New laws fail to shield Indigenous women from higher murder rates
Many of the people in the crowd knew or were related to someone who had gone missing or been killed. They wore pictures of their loved ones on their T-shirts. The gathering at the Capitol was a place not only to remember and grieve the people they had lost, but also to support each other and call for change.
Carrie Scott-Haney, whose daughter went missing from Milwaukee and was murdered by an ex-boyfriend, has called for a statewide Purple Alert, similar to an Amber Alert for missing children, but for missing women with a history of experiencing domestic violence or abuse.
Her daughter, Audrey "TuTu" Scott, was missing for about two months in 2017 before her remains were found in Racine County.
She doesn’t want another family to go through what hers did. A descendant of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Scott-Haney displayed her daughter’s picture on the steps of the Capitol Thursday.
"All I have (left) is a picture," she said.
She also carried a flyer directing people to a Change.org petition for the Purple Alert system.
Domestic violence was a common refrain in the stories family members told at the Capitol.
Kozee Decorah's partner and the father of her three children was convicted in December of killing her and trying to hide the evidence by burning her body. Decorah's family members and friends said the Ho-Chunk woman was a victim of domestic violence.
Stacey Schreiber Schinko, whose children are related to Decorah, was relieved by the conviction and 25-year prison sentence Decorah's partner ultimately received. She knows all too well that many never find their missing family member or never see a conviction.
Many people at Thursday's gathering, including Schreiber Schinko and Scott-Haney, called for more media attention and more law enforcement resources directed to cases of missing or killed Indigenous people.
"I wanted Kozee's name to be as well known as Gabby Petito or Laci Peterson,” Schreiber Schinko said, referring to two white women whose disappearances were highly publicized.
More: Wisconsin family calls for harsher charges in 'heinous' killing of Ho-Chunk woman
In the weeks and months after Decorah's death, family members and friends worked to publicize her case when her partner was charged with a less serious crime than they thought he warranted.
Still, other cases, like that of Tourtillott, a Menominee woman, remain unsolved. In recent years, the FBI and the Menominee Indian Tribe have tried to breathe new life into the investigation by offering a reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
But what happened to Tourtillott, who was 18 when she went missing in 1986 from the Menominee Indian Reservation, remains a mystery decades later. The night she went missing she had been at a birthday party in Keshena with friends. She was last seen exiting a vehicle near the Tomow Overlook on the reservation, an FBI reward poster says.
Her body was found six months later in a swampy wooded area near the overlook, the Green Bay Press Gazette has reported.
Signs propped up on the Capitol steps demanded "no more stolen sisters" and for their lost loved ones to be brought home.
Sarah Volpenhein is a Report for America corps reporter who focuses on news of value to underserved communities for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email her at svolpenhei@gannett.com. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to this reporting effort at JSOnline.com/RFA.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Capitol rally condemns 'epidemic' of violence against Indigenous women
