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Navajo activist celebrates attention given murdered women

Posted at 2:22 PM, May 10, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-10 17:22:24-04

PHOENIX (AP) - Debbie Nez-Manuel was 3 years old when her mother disappeared from their home on the Navajo Nation. She turned up dead a few weeks later about an hour's drive away in Gallup, New Mexico.

So Nez-Manuel was overjoyed more than four decades later when the Arizona House of Representatives agreed this week to study the problem of Native American women who have gone missing or been killed. She said it felts like an early Mother's Day present for her mom she never knew.

The national campaign to identify cases of Native American women and girls who have been killed or gone missing has gained momentum in recent months with a string of similar state and federal legislation, marches and a series of stories by The Associated Press.