Many people argue that missing Indigenous people are not getting the justice they deserve because of their race. The case of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie has brought up a lot of controversy about how much attention they are getting, but indigenous people aren’t getting any at all. I believe that the only reason they are getting this much attention is that they had a fanbase before her death because they were vlogging their journey to Wyoming. I think they also had many more views because of the weird circumstances that occurred during her death.
The term “Missing White Woman Syndrome” is mentioned in this article about the Gabby Petito case. Gwen Ifill coined the term in 2004 and uses it as a way to refer to the coverage of missing white girls that are covered on television or media. While I believe that Indigenous people deserve to get more coverage on TV/media, I don’t think that race is a big factor in this one case. This case has a huge fanbase, while Ashley Heavyrunner had nowhere near as many, to begin with. Ashley had 107,000 views, while Gabby Petito had 15,400,000 views.
The article “America is neglecting missing Indigenous women” talks about how we would see a reduction in domestic violence if we focused on the investigation of these instances of strangulation, which is what happened to Gabby Petito. This would help out all women of all races. Focusing on what we know will help everyone is important. I do believe that Indigenous women are being neglected, but this case isn’t a good case to compare it to because of the huge fanbase it had.
Many hashtags were created to help people of color get the justice that they needed for racial brutality. The hashtag #SayHerName was created and #missingDCgirls to raise awareness for black females. I hope that people of color can get the justice that they deserve and that these hashtags will help raise more awareness for them.
People of color are just as important as everyone else. It is important that everyone is treated equally and that the media covers missing indigenous women as much as everyone else. Racial inequality has been an issue for a long time now, and it should be stopped.
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There are many women of color that go missing that do not receive as much media attention as do white women. Like we discussed there is a white women syndrome where people are fascinated with a white woman missing or abused. It honestly does not make any sense that these other women do not receive the same amount of attention. It is for sure something that we as a country need to address and work on.