Carrying the Message brings visibility to missing
Angela Nevarez holds a sign for Matthew Broncho on March 19.
By LORI ANN EDMO
Sho-Ban News
CHUBBUCK — Visibility is important for the missing and that is one of the reasons the Carrying the Message MMIP group conducted a prayer walk down Yellowstone Avenue in Chubbuck March 19.
It was to draw attention to Matthew Jay Broncho whose been missing for three years, along with other loved family members. It’s also to express the need for searches and to get media attention — everything that a Caucasian person would get when missing.
Cynthia Cinder Metz, Matthew’s mother, said he’s been missing since March 20, 2019, “It’s been three years now, we haven’t heard anything more about where he may be.” They also haven’t heard any updates from the Box Elder County Sheriff’s or from the Fort Hall Police.
“The reason we are out here now is to help spread awareness – get his information out there, just let everybody know he’s still missing,” she continued. “We are also out here to bring awareness to the other individuals that are missing, not only in Fort Hall but other reservations.”
Metz said they were hoping to get media attention during the walk and get it out on social media. She said there hasn’t been any tips but people have contacted her with ideas and some have offered to form another search and that’s helpful.
Carrying the Message MMIP group walks down Yellowstone Avenue.
National advocate for Missing, Murdered Indigenous People and families Roxanne White from Seattle, Wash., along with her cousin Cissy Strong Reyes from the Yakama Nation, Toppenish, Wash., were both in attendance to support the families to help find Mathew. White helped organize the vigil March 18 in Fort Hall, along with the prayer walk as they’re hoping someone will see the posters and remember something regarding the individuals who are missing or murdered.
White is a survivor of human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence and childhood abduction. Willeena George and Cinder Metz invited them to Fort Hall. It’s the second time White has been in Fort Hall as she was here three years ago to support Susan Pevo in her search to find her son Austin Frost Pevo. “I’m here to support the people of the Shoshone-Bannock. I’m here to lend support, my platform or whatever platform I might have,” she continued.
In helping organize the events, they’re hoping that someone will see the posters or wording and they will remember something or feel guilty even to come forward and give any information that they have on the whereabouts of what happened to Matthew Jay Broncho.
White explained it’s her spiritual work, “The call that my ancestors have put on me. Being a survivor and being a family member, we’ve already walked through this path with my cousin.”
Cissy Strong Reyes and Roxanne White.
Cissy Strong Reyes said she made the trip to participate because of her late sister Rosenda Strong who was murdered in 2018 and found 275 days later in a freezer. They recently buried her September 25, 2021. “I do this work for her and not to be silent. We just buried my sister so I want to keep doing it for her justice – it’s what we are fighting for.”
White said Indigenous people are just as missed. “When it comes to like Gabby Petito — the whole world got involved – we have missing girls, murdered girls in our community and boys and men – we exceed every average, every statistic and yet nobody outside of our communities are doing nothing.”
“But we also are here like to wake up our own communities on our own reservations,” White continued. “The violence in our own reservations is just as important for us to work together to heal, to end the violence together, to clean up the drugs, the alcohol off our reservations to protect our future generations and the little ones – all of this is a part of that.”
She added part of what they have to do and it’s really unfortunate, “We found it to be true when Rosenda went missing, my little cousin, one thing I knew for sure if we didn’t go out on the streets often, we probably did I don’t know how many vigils and ceremonies in the past three years, but we do them all the time because we know if we are not doing this law enforcement, the courts, they’ll just sweep it under the rug.”
A car sign at the prayer walk in Chubbuck.
White said they have to fight every day to come out and do this stuff, “So that we can get justice — just as simple as that. If we don’t do nothing at all, nothing will happen, nothing will change. We’re here to help the community here.”
As cars would pass by, some would honk while others would stare while one vehicle’s occupants cussed at them.
