Indigenous woman facing the camera with a red handprint painted across her mouth at an MMIW gathering.

Before She Became a Statistic

Posted on by Casey Edwards

 

 

 

She had a name. She had people who loved her. She had a life before the world learned how she disappeared.

 

Before she was a statistic, she had a name.

Before her photograph was shared with the word MISSING above it, there were photographs taken simply because someone loved her.

There were ordinary mornings.

There were people who knew the sound of her laugh.

Someone knew how she took her coffee. Someone had heard her angry. Someone had watched her walk through a door a thousand times without ever imagining there would come a day when they would wait for her to walk through it again.

She was not born a statistic.

She became one when the rest of the world failed to know her as anything else.

And that is one of the things I want to change here.

I do not want to tell stories only about missing and murdered Indigenous women.

I want us to remember the women.

Their names.

Their lives.

The people still looking for them.

The people still grieving them.

And the families who have had to learn how to keep demanding answers from systems that should never have required them to beg in the first place.

A long row of empty red dresses hanging outdoors at sunset, symbolizing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The red dress has become a powerful symbol of the Indigenous women and girls who are missing or have been murdered—and of the absence carried by the people who love them.

This is where we begin.

Not with a number.

With her.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Casey Edwards

8 thoughts on “Before She Became a Statistic”

    1. Thank you so much. ❤️ Giving a voice to those who have been silenced is one of the reasons I began this journey. My Indigenous sisters deserve to be seen, heard, and treated with dignity and respect. Their families deserve answers. They deserve justice. And these women deserve to be remembered for the lives they lived—not simply for the way their stories ended.

      Not with a number. With her. 🪶❤️

  2. This is such a powerful and deeply respectful beginning, Case!. You remind us that behind every statistic is a woman who lived, laughed, loved, and mattered to someone. “Not with a number. With her.” is a line that stays with the heart.
    Thank you for using your voice to honor these women, their families, and the justice they deserve! ❤️

    1. Betty, thank you so much. The fact that “Not with a number. With her.” is the line that stayed with you means more than I can express, because that sentence holds the entire purpose of this series.

      As a Native woman and a member of the United Houma Nation, this work is deeply personal to me. These women are not strangers to me. They are my sisters.

      Too often, they are reduced to statistics, case numbers, headlines, or the circumstances of their deaths. But before any of that, she was a whole human being—a daughter, sister, mother, friend, and someone deeply loved. I want readers to meet her, not merely learn what happened to her.

      Thank you for seeing the heart of this work and for standing beside these women, their families, and their fight for justice. ❤️

      1. You’re welcome, Casey!

        The phrase “I want readers to meet her, not merely learn what happened to her” carries impact!

        Thank you for sharing her story and honoring your sisters with such dignity and for helping others see them as they truly were, human beings first. 🙏

Leave a Reply