This is True Consequences, a true crime and mystery podcast with stories based in New Mexico in the American Desert Southwest.

Welcome back to True Consequences.

I'm your host, Eric Carter Lundee.

Today I speak with Cheyenne Antonio from the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. Our topic of discussion is the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls

in New Mexico, as well as sex trafficking. Cheyenne spent some time talking about the culture of violence

that the Native American community has experienced over the last

several hundred years. She goes pretty in depth into this and talks about how missing and

murdered indigenous people is not a new issue. In fact, it's an issue that has been occurring

for centuries. Now, what's happened is because of the

internet and because people have more access to information, it definitely has become more

prominent in the mindset of many Americans. The issue itself is very complicated and very difficult

to navigate, which makes any kind of solution seem very far away.

I wish I could tell you that from our conversation we were able to solve this issue and come up with a solution.

Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of the missing and murdered indigenous people,

it's just not possible to have a magic wand solution.

There are some things that need to change in regards to legislation, but even that may not be sufficient to solve this problem.

I walked away from this interview, really feeling like there's so much work to do.

I don't really

even know what that's going to look like, but I hope that this episode is a step in the right

direction in terms of creating some awareness and conversation around the fact that there are many

thousands of missing indigenous women and girls in this country. And the sad fact of the

matter is that many of them are likely victims of sex trafficking. And for those that aren't,

...