Efforts to address missing, killed Indigenous women falter in Oregon despite new law
Updated May 05, 2021;
Posted May 05, 2021
Mildred Quaempts and Merle Kirk hold a portrait of Mavis Kirk-Greeley, who died in 2009 after a driver allegedly deliberately hit her with his vehicle on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Kirk-Greeley is Quaempts’ daughter and Kirk’s sister. Kathy Aney/Underscore
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Two years ago, Merle Kirk asked Oregon legislators for help.
During a House committee hearing in February 2019, she told the story of the women in her family who have disappeared or were murdered over the last 60 years.
Kirk told lawmakers that her sister, Mavis Kirk-Greeley, died in 2009 after she was deliberately hit by a vehicle on the Warm Springs Reservation. The driver was never convicted of a crime. For Kirk, her sister’s death echoed the 1957 murder of her grandmother, Mavis Josephine McKay, on the Yakama Indian Reservation and adds more grief to the loss of yet another relative.