Crime novelist explores missing, murdered Indigenous women crisis in 'Where They Last Saw Her'

Marcie Rendon, author of 'Where They Last Saw her,' spoke at the Muir Library in Winnebago, Minnesota | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Marcie Rendon, author of 'Where They Last Saw Her,' spoke at the Muir Library in Winnebago in southern Minnesota last Tuesday, where a group of 15-20 white women from a conservative, Republican-leaning farming community came to hear the Native American author talk about her recently published book.
The crime novel explores the theme of Native American women who are missing or murdered.
Rendon is a member of the White Earth Nation in northwest Minnesota who now lives in Minneapolis.
The story begins with the protagonist, Quill, a Native American wife and mother of two, who is jogging on the reservation when she hears a woman scream. That scream sends her into panic, which later leads to an investigation.
Rendon told the admiring audience that she is a crime junkie who loves to create page-turners, and that her goal with the new book wasn't to provide a sociological study of indigenous life, but to tell a good story.
However, Rendon framed the book's accounts of missing Native American women taken from a reservation and an infant kidnapped from a Walmart to the movement recognizing the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIW/R)
Early on, Crow, Quill's husband, expresses concern about his wife risking her safety chasing down information on the possible identity of the woman she heard screaming:
'We've been hearing these horror stories of four thousand, maybe five thousand women missing across Canada. Missing down here. The stories of what has happened to women and children' – he emphasized children – 'in the man camps over the Dakotas. And they are here now.' He jabbed two fingers onto the table when he said the word now. 'Those same men are here now.' He jabbed the table again. 'I don't want anyone from my family to go missing. To end up dead in a ditch or a river. No. Not on my watch.'
When the book club members had an opportunity to ask Rendon questions, they didn't focus on the plotline of the story but on the larger MMIW/R issue, what's behind it and what could be done to address it.
In mainstream culture, Rendon responded, Native Americans are seen as invisible and their problems have not been taken as seriously.
'When I go out East to talk, most people out there think we're all dead; that we disappeared with, I don't know, the Black Hills gold rush, which also makes it easier for us to disappear if people don't think we exist,' she said. 'How can you disappear if you don't exist?'
Although the MMIW/R issue has benefited from more public discussions, such as the upcoming May 5 MMIW/R Day of Awareness, Rendon said, when she was recently in Madison, she met a college professor who had never heard of the issue.
'Where They Last Saw Her' is an example of a work of fiction that raises awareness of a real crisis and provides insights into subcultures and their struggles.
In 2018, as part of a statewide program called Wisconsin Reads, several book clubs around the state collectively read and discussed 'The Round House' by Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota. That book also raised awareness of struggles on Native American reservations and, in particular, the complication of prosecuting a crime when there are competing jurisdictional authorities between a tribal nation and county and state authorities.
Rendon is also the author of the 'Cash Blackbear' series, which involves a Native American 19-year-old woman who solves crimes in the Red River area of Minnesota/North Dakota in the 1970s. She said her editor at Bantam asked her about writing another book outside the series.
'She said, 'Well, what's the current issue in Indian Country?' and I said, 'missing and murdered Indian women.''
However, Rendon was initially reluctant to write a story around the MMIW/R issue.
'I said, 'there's no resolution. If somebody's missing or murdered, there's no happy ending,' she said. 'There's no resolution to the story. They're either dead or they're still missing.''
Rendon's story is set in Minnesota at a fictional tribe on the outskirts of Duluth, Minnesota, where in real life there had been a major pipeline project on a reservation in the area, like the one in her book — the replacement of Line 3 by Enbridge on the Fond du Lac Reservation, completed in 2021.
Prior to the Line 3 permit being approved, there had been concerns by Native American groups about man camps and violence and harassment against Native women.
A 2021 article by The Guardian, 'Sexual violence along pipeline route follows Indigenous women's warnings,' reported that a local crisis center for survivors of violence had 'received more than 40 reports about Line 3 workers harassing and assaulting women and girls who live in northwestern Minnesota.'
Rene Ann Goodrich, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, and a member of the Wisconsin MMIW/R Task Force is one of several Ojibwe women from Northern Wisconsin who have also expressed concern over Enbridge replacing a portion of Line 5, currently located on the Bad River Reservation, but Enbridge has filed for permits to build outside the reservation. Besides environmental concerns, the new project could result in a man camp in the area and possible assaults against Native women.
Rendon said there is a strong relationship between the extractive industry and the MMIW/R issue, and she makes a strong correlation between the two in her book.
'Anytime you have an extractive industry, like the pipelines, gold mines, uranium mines, anytime you have an extractive industry where large groups of men are pulled in to do the extraction, there's no police force. They show up without their wives and families. They show up without ministers or priests. It's just like the Wild West,' she said. 'There has to be something done about the extractive industries and this use of men in large groups to actually go out and do these extractive industries. I don't know how you change this. But I think that awareness is a piece of it.'
However, Rendon said she had heard that some oil companies have responded to concerns about man camps by putting men up in hotels with their families.
'Talk about the power of women, right? Bringing your wife and she'll make you go to church,' she said.
Rendon said it was vital for her to portray Native American women in a community. In the story, three women, Quill and her friends Punk and Gaylyn, often travel together as they pursue information about missing women or help with searches.
'In Native communities, you almost never do anything alone,' she said. 'You know, if I'm going to go to the grocery store, somebody's with me. There's one family that, if you see them at the pow wow — if you see them at the grocery store, if you see them downtown, in the courthouse — it's the mom, the grandma, the kids, you know; it's like, it's a whole group,' she said.
Regarding Native women and community, Rendon notes it was Indigenous/First Nation women in Canada who first gathered together and spoke out about the phenomenon of Indigenous women missing around the man camps of oil pipelines and mining operations.
'I knew that in this story about missing and murdered Indian women, what was important to me was a community of women, and so I knew that it wasn't going to be just one person,' she said.
Rendon said she has received some criticism for including a male Native American who is abusive.
'We have bad people in our communities, too,' she said, 'and then there's the thing about domestic abuse, it happens in every community and in smaller communities. People know that it happens, but people don't talk about it, or there's this secrecy and stuff that happens around it.'
In Minnesota, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) reports there were 716 Indigenous persons missing in that state in 2024, 57% of whom were women.
In Wisconsin the exact number of missing Indigenous persons is not published, in part because the state does not have a clearinghouse like Minnesota for gathering that data.
Rendon praised efforts in Minnesota to create an MMIW/R office that tracks MMIW/R cases, works with families, and provides support and even rewards for information. And she noted that in Minneapolis, the Indigenous Protectors Movement, a branch of the American Indian Movement, is active in putting out flyers and organizing searches for missing persons.
In researching the novel, Rendon said she was surprised by how often white women who went missing were blamed for causing their own victimization through their behavior, including having multiple sexual partners. In Native American communities, she said, there isn't that cloud of guilt over women.
'The Native community clearly has said, 'I don't care what our women were doing, nobody deserves to be trafficked. Nobody deserves to end up dead in a ditch or in a gunny sack in the Red River Valley,'' she said. 'So there's a difference, a cultural difference that I saw, which surprised me.'
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Business Insider

3 hours ago

• Business Insider

Walmart to pay $10M to settle FTC charges related to wire transfer services

Walmart (WMT) will pay $10M to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it turned a blind eye to scammers who used its in-store money transfer services to take hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. consumers. The FTC's June 2022 complaint alleged that between 2013 and 2018, Walmart allowed its money transfer services to be used by scammers who defrauded consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Walmart failed to implement effective anti-fraud policies and procedures, did not properly train its employees, and failed to warn customers about potential fraud related to money transfers, according to the complaint. In June 2023, the FTC filed an amended complaint adding further details related to the company's alleged telemarketing violations. In July 2024, the district court dismissed the Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule claim for the second time, presenting a significant hurdle for the Commission to obtain monetary relief for consumers in the litigation. In November 2024, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted Walmart permission to appeal certain rulings by the district court. The stipulated order announced resolves the FTC's case against Walmart and is intended to ensure the company does not engage in similar alleged conduct in the future. In addition to imposing the $10M judgment, the order prohibits Walmart from: providing money transfer services without taking timely and appropriate action to effectively detect and prevent fraud-induced money transfers; sending or paying out any money transfer that it knows, or consciously avoids knowing, is a fraud-induced money transfer; substantially assisting or supporting any seller or telemarketer that it knows, or consciously avoids knowing, is accepting a cash-to-cash money transfer as payment for goods, services or charitable contributions sought through telemarketing and substantially assisting or supporting any telemarketer that it knows, or consciously avoids knowing, has asked a consumer to pay in advance for a loan or credit extension. The Commission vote approving the stipulated final order was 3-0.

Los Angeles Times

3 hours ago

• Los Angeles Times

Rhode Island lawmakers pass bill to ban sales of assault weapons

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island's Democratic-controlled state House on Friday approved legislation that would ban the sale and manufacture of many semiautomatic rifles commonly referred to as assault weapons. The proposal now heads to the desk of Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee, who has said he supports assault weapons bans. If the bill is signed into law, Rhode Island will join 10 other states that have some sort of prohibition on high-powered firearms that were once banned nationwide and are now largely the weapon of choice among those responsible for most of the country's mass shootings. Gun control advocates have been pushing for an assault weapons ban in Rhode Island for more than a decade. But despite being a Democratic stronghold, lawmakers throughout the country's smallest state have long argued over the necessity and legality of such proposals. The bill applies only to the sale and manufacturing of assault weapons and not possession. Only Washington state has a similar law. Residents looking to purchase an assault weapon from nearby New Hampshire or elsewhere will also be blocked. Federal law prohibits people from traveling to a different state to purchase a gun and returning it to a state where that particular of weapon is banned. Nine states and the District of Columbia have bans on the possession of assault weapons, covering major cities including Los Angeles and New York. Hawaii bans assault pistols. Critics of Rhode Island's proposed law argued Friday during floor debates that assault weapons bans do little to curb mass shootings and only punish people with such rifles. 'This bill doesn't go after criminals, it just puts the burden on law-abiding citizens,' said Republican Sen. Thomas Paolino. It wasn't just Republicans who opposed the legislation. David Hogg — a gun control advocate who survived the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. — and the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence described the proposed ban as the 'weakest assault weapons ban in the country.' 'I know that Rhode Islanders deserve a strong bill that not only bans the sale, but also the possession of assault weapons. It is this combination that equals public safety,' Hogg said in a statement. Elisabeth Ryan, policy counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety, rejected assertions that the proposed law is weak. 'The weakest law is what Rhode Island has now — no ban on assault weapons,' Ryan said. 'This would create a real, enforceable ban on the sale and manufacture of assault weapons, just like the law already working in Washington state, getting them off the shelves of Rhode Island gun stores once and for all.' Nationally, assault weapons bans have been challenged in court by gun rights groups that argue the bans violate the 2nd Amendment. AR-15-style firearms are among the bestselling rifles in the country. The conservative-majority Supreme Court may soon take up the issue. The justices declined to hear a challenge to Maryland's assault weapons ban in early June, but three conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — publicly noted their disagreement. A fourth justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh, indicated he was skeptical that the bans are constitutional and predicted the court would hear a case 'in the next term or two.' Kruesi writes for the Associated Press. AP writers David Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo., and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

New York Post

5 hours ago

• New York Post

Gavin Newsom sipped wine at Napa fundraiser while anti-ICE protesters plunged L.A. into chaos

California Gov. Gavin Newsom threw on a pair of sunglasses and sipped wine at a ritzy party at his sun-drenched vineyard earlier this month – just as chaotic, anti-ICE protests kicked off in Los Angeles. The luxe event dubbed 'Vineyard Vibes' was held at the Odette Estate Winery in Napa Valley to raise money for the PlumpJack Foundation, founded by Newsom's sister, on the afternoon of June 7. One witness was appalled that the Democrat was casually enjoying a glass of vino in a V-neck T-shirt and baseball cap the day after his City of Angels started spiraling into violence, with rioters throwing concrete rocks at cops and vandalizing federal buildings. 4 California Gov. Gavin Newsom was spotted at the Odette Estate Winery in Napa Valley as anti-ICE protests kicked off in Los Angeles earlier this month. Obtained by NYPost 4 The governor was dressed casually at the fundraiser, just a day after LA started spiraling into violence. Obtained by NYPost 'I couldn't believe it,' said the source, who photographed Newsom at the wine-tasting event. 'He was just walking around like this was an everyday occurrence.' But more than 400 miles away, downtown Los Angeles was plunging into chaos – rioters were busted for tossing Molotov cocktails at law enforcement while vehicles were set on fire and scrawled with graffiti reading 'KILL ICE' and 'F–K ICE.' The violence, spurred by raids on illegal immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reached a point that President Trump called in the National Guard over objections from Newsom, who ripped into the Republican for inflaming the situation. Newsom attended the wine fundraiser for at least 90 minutes, the source said — with Trump sending in the troops later that evening. 4 The 'Vineyard Vibes' event happened on June 7, as one witness there was shocked to see Newsom in a V-neck T-shirt enjoying a glass of wine on the same day protests were breaking out across the City of Angels. AFP via Getty Images The event featured 'contemporary yet sophisticated' wines, live jazz music and local sources pizza and smash burgers. 'It's the perfect kick-off to summer fun,' promotional language stated. 'The fete will take place on the Winery Crushpad, where we'll gather for music, food, conversation, a delicious wine!' A spokesperson for the governor's office made clear Newsom 'proudly attended' the annual fundraiser for the UCSF Cancer 'in honor of his mother who died of breast cancer' at age 55. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! PlumpJack Foundation is focused on cancer prevention and education and combating the cycle of poverty, according to its website. Newsom co-founded Odette Estate Winery with two other business partners more than a decade ago. Newsom, a possible contender to run for president in 2028, has faced past criticism for being out of touch, including in November 2020 when he was caught attending a swanky dinner party for 12 even as he encouraged California residents not to socialize because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A photo snapped at the time showed him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, unmasked around the same time he pushed for state guidelines meant to suppress the spread of the disease. 4 A source indicated that Newsom was at the fundraiser for around 90 minutes before troops were later sent by President Trump across the city. REUTERS Newsom apologized for the shocking display of hypocrisy as he faced a firestorm. 'While the First Partner and I followed the restaurant's health protocols and took safety precautions, I should have modeled better behavior and not joined the dinner,' he said in a statement. Newsom and Trump have been battling in court over the commander in chief's authority to control National Guard troops he sent to the liberal West Coast city. Newsom claimed the deployment wasted resources and raised the temperature while Trump insisted he had to take the action to restore order.