“Thank you Los Angeles Times for sharing Aubrey’s story, a story all too familiar for many families of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women/Relatives. We are the voice of our loved ones who have been silenced. #BeHerVoice #MMIW #MMIR #SilenceIsBetrayal #TransIsBeautiful #WhyWeWearRed”
Missing-Aubrey Dameron from Grove, Oklahoma
By KURTIS LEE
JAN. 31, 2020
3 AM
“GROVE, Okla. —
The woman’s oval-shaped face, on a crinkled 8 ½-by-11-inch flier, is easy to miss.
Taped on a wall inside a gas station off Highway 59 — amid a collage of business cards for lawn care and Bible tutoring services — it reads:
Name: Aubrey Dameron
Age: 25 years old
Height: 5’10
Weight: 140 lbs
Last Seen: Grove, Oklahoma 03/09/2019
Since Dameron disappeared from her northeast Oklahoma home nearly a year ago, her aunt, Pam Smith, has plastered dozens of placards around town. She has also organized search teams to scour fields and to drain a pond. And she has repeatedly pleaded for information in Facebook posts.
But so far, nothing.
‘We just want to bring her home,’ Smith said on a recent morning outside the gas station. ‘We want answers.’
Dameron, a member of the Cherokee Nation, is one of thousands of indigenous women who have gone missing or were found murdered in recent years.
Last year alone, nearly 5,600 Native American women were reported missing, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. The actual number, activists say, is probably much higher, in part because local authorities sometimes mistakenly list the victims as Latina or white.
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For Smith, the waiting has felt eternal. It’s been nearly a year since her niece — the one who would rush to greet her with a big kiss on the cheek — went missing.
Dameron, who went by the nickname ‘Shorty,’ was last seen on March 9 in the gravel driveway of her single-level house outside Grove, a town of 7,000 that’s a short drive from the Missouri state line.
For Smith’s brother, Christian Fencer, their niece’s disappearance has felt like the loss of his support system. Fencer is gay and when he first told Dameron, a transgender woman, she knew just how to respond, he recalls. She knew when he wanted to talk and when he didn’t. She could flash him a knowing glance and suddenly the sting of an ignorant comment didn’t feel as deep.
‘We shared everything,’ he said. ‘She is my rock.’
In high school, when Dameron transitioned, some classmates stared at her in disdain. Businesses sometimes kicked her out for using the women’s restroom, Smith says, and there was the time she went to visit her grandfather in hospice care and a pastor offering the family support spotted Dameron wearing her favorite pair of flats.
‘Don’t dress like a woman,’ the pastor scoffed, telling her to throw the flats into a fireplace.
Dameron sobbed and threw the shoes away. Smith and the other family members stayed silent.
‘It hurts that in that moment I did not speak up for my niece,’ Smith says, adding that, despite the hardships, her niece kept smiling. She always persevered.
So now, Smith says, she’s channeling that same energy.
Smith and Fencer have organized volunteer search teams to scour fields and drain a pond on private property near the house where Dameron lived with her mother and stepfather, from whom Smith is now estranged.
Frustrated with the pace of the investigation — what she says has often felt like a lack of investigation — Smith has made it her business to draw attention to the case.
Local authorities here in Delaware County have tracked dozens of tips, but officials say that no suspects have been identified and Dameron’s whereabouts remain unknown. Authorities have listed Dameron as a missing person and say the investigation is ongoing as to her whereabouts.
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Recently, Cherokee Nation officials have paid for billboards along major highways in Tulsa seeking tips and volunteer search teams say they intend to keep looking.
Smith is sure her niece would never go this long without contacting family. Her social media accounts have remained dormant since her disappearance.
On a recent frigid morning, Smith and Fencer followed what has become a defining routine of their lives — they pulled up at a gas station with new fliers. Fencer walked inside.
‘OK if I hang this poster of my missing niece? Her name is Aubrey Dameron,’ he said, flashing the large text ‘Missing.’ Dameron’s face looks straight ahead, her hair curled.
Yes, the clerk nodded.
Fencer grabbed a piece of tape, affixing the paper to the wall by the entrance.
Then, they drove down winding country roads, bordered by fields stacked with bales of hay, until they got to the gravel driveway.
Whenever they’re in Grove, they return to the spot. The place she was last seen. What if we overlooked something, they tell themselves. Maybe a piece of clothing. Or jewelry.
‘We know she’s out there,’ Smith said. ‘We just want Aubrey back.’”
Native women are vanishing across the U.S. Inside an aunt's desperate search for her niece
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