Woman Launches Forensics Lab for Missing, Murdered Indigenous People

• Haley Omeasoo grew to become a forensic anthropologist to assist the households of lacking and murdered Indigenous folks.
• She noticed the issue firsthand rising up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
• She hopes to open a devoted lab tribes in Montana can use to research MMIP instances.

Within the Blackfoot language, “ohkomi” means “to make use of one’s voice.”

When Haley Omeasoo used her forensics experience to launch a nonprofit geared toward aiding the households of lacking and murdered Indigenous folks, the title Ohkomi Forensics appeared becoming.

Omeasoo, an enrolled member of the Hopi tribe who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana, is a second-year doctoral scholar within the Univerity of Montana’s Forensic and Molecular Anthropology Program. The 27-year-old mentioned she went into forensic anthropology particularly so she might assist the households of lacking and murdered Indigenous folks (MMIP), together with these she knew on her personal reservation.

“I simply needed to assist the households and discover ways in which I can help in these sorts of instances,” Omeasoo informed Enterprise Insider.

Indigenous folks go lacking and are murdered at disproportionately excessive charges in communities all through the US.

In Montana in 2021, Indigenous folks made up 30.7% of lacking particular person instances regardless of making up lower than 7% of the state’s inhabitants, in response to the Montana Division of Justice.

Montana created a lacking and murdered indigenous folks’s process drive in 2019 to handle the issue, however activists have pushed for extra to be accomplished to supply assist and sources to households who’re nonetheless trying to find solutions.

That is the place Omeasoo hopes Ohkomi Forensics can are available in.

Filling the hole between the households of MMIP and legislation enforcement

The problem is private for Omeasoo, and never simply because she’s seen it impression so many in her group.

Ashley HeavyRunner Loring, a relative and former highschool classmate of Omeasoo’s, vanished from the Blackfeet Reservation in 2017 when she was a 20-year-old faculty scholar.

Regardless of years of relentless looking out by her household, Loring has by no means been discovered.

“Simply in speaking along with her household extra about her case and the issues which have gone unsuitable and ways in which I may help along with her case form of led me into this discipline,” Omeasoo mentioned.

A few of the companies Omeasoo plans to supply households by way of Ohkomi Forensics, which launched final month, embrace bone and human stays evaluation, figuring out indicators of trauma, pathology, and identification. She additionally desires to give attention to performing crime-scene searches, finding and excavating burial websites, correctly dealing with proof, and forensic DNA.

One of many challenges with addressing the MMIP disaster is jurisdictional points. As a result of tribes are sovereign nations, crimes dedicated on reservations typically don’t fall to state companies or obtain state-level sources. Nevertheless, tribal legislation enforcement companies will be understaffed or underfunded. The FBI usually steps in to research instances, however Indigenous households ceaselessly categorical frustration and say there’s a lack of progress and communication.

“I simply really feel like there’s form of this hole between the households which have lacking members of the family after which the legislation enforcement companies,” Omeasoo mentioned, hoping she may help bridge that hole.

Usually, she mentioned, households seek for their family members all on their very own.

Omeasoo desires to have the ability to step in wherever households want her. As an example, when households really feel like one thing might have been neglected in an post-mortem, she might are available in and reevaluate the case.

A devoted lab for tribes in Montana

Ohkomi Forensics is beginning by specializing in instances involving households that Omeasoo already is aware of on the Blackfeet Reservation, together with some she has already been serving to out with.

Her plan is to get agreements in place with tribes all through Montana to supply forensic companies. She additionally desires to interact companies on the tribal, state, and federal ranges to determine how her firm can finest match into the investigative course of.

Her final purpose, which is already within the works, is to open her personal lab that may be utilized by any tribe in Montana. She desires to ultimately broaden to incorporate different states and even Canada.

For her dissertation, Omeasoo can also be engaged on making a genetic database that can be utilized to match the stays of deceased people with these of residing members of the Blackfeet tribe. She mentioned the genetic database — tribally owned, managed, and maintained — can be one of many first of its type.

Throughout her work within the College of Montana’s forensics lab, Omeasoo usually works with deceased people whose again story she doesn’t know.

“However doing work again on the reservation, with my very own folks and figuring out the households and figuring out the people, like in Ashley’s case, which might be lacking, it’s a lot more durable,” she mentioned, including she tries to recollect, “I am there to do a job and the way all my work can go in direction of serving to this household heal.”