Wednesday, March 16th 2022, 6:01 pm
Advocates for Indigenous people with missing family members are calling for action.
Murdered and Missing Indigenous People chapters in Oklahoma are asking families to submit DNA to help identify remains.
Jolene Beard's family has searched for any sign of her for two years. Jolene's sister's DNA is in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NAMUS) with the hope it can make a connection if remains are positively identified.
“’Do we want to hear that her remains have been found? Yes and no,’” Jolene's sister, Donna Crosslin, said. “It’s bittersweet.”
Crosslin and her eight other siblings are still look for answers after Jolene didn't show up to a doctor's appointment in March 2020.
"It's just, you're waiting. Every day, you wake up and you're wondering, ‘Where is she? Who's going to find her? When is she going to be found?" Crosslin said.
During the first anniversary of Jolene's disappearance, Lawton police and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women chapter in Anadarko asked Donna to submit DNA to NAMUS.
A DNA sample can help span the search across the country with the hope to link John and Jane Doe's with their families.
"I wanted to do it, looking for someone that's missing is like a needle in a haystack,” Crosslin said. “It's overwhelming. She could be anywhere. She could be here, there, states away. Who knows?”
Now, the MMIW and MMIP chapters across Oklahoma are asking more families to submit a swab.
"We actually refer it as the nation's silent mass disaster because of the volume of the missing and unidentified persons cases that have to be resolved by these agencies," said Halana Jay of MMIP Apache Chapter of Oklahoma. “There's over 21,000 missing persons in the NAMUS database today. Over 13,000 unidentified in NAMUS and over 13,000 unclaimed people."
Donna said a small step that could bring the much-needed closure to her family.
"She deserves that respect to be buried properly,” Crosslin said. “You need to take every avenue and go with it because you never know who's going to have the right information come up.”
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