Autumn Shadanash: The Epidemic of missing Indigenous women.

Have you ever imagined what it’s like to have someone you love vanish without a trace? To be left with nothing but a jigsaw puzzle of their last known moments, a patchwork of clues that never seem to fit together. That's the agonizing reality we're delving into today, focusing on the heart-rending case of 26-year-old Autumn Shaganash, an Indigenous woman who disappeared under inexplicably puzzling circumstances. From a sunny day at the park to her eerie last Snapchat interactions, we’re piecing together the fragments of Autumn's story, one that mirrors the countless unheard tales of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Strap in as we boldly confront the alarming statistics and systemic failings that shroud these cases in a chilling web of mystery. The disturbing fact? Murder is the third leading cause of death amongst Native women, yet their stories often slip through the cracks of law enforcement and media coverage. We're pushing past these barriers, exploring the potential involvement of human trafficking, jurisdictional challenges, and the desperate cry for resources. This isn't just about Autumn. It's about the countless women like her, their voices silenced, their stories waiting to be heard. Their lives matter, and so does their narrative.

CTV News Autumn Shaganash's Family waits for answers.  9/21/2023
CBC News Family of Missing Barrie woman fears human trafficking. 6/29/2023
Global News "She is in danger: Family of missing Ontario fears for her safety. 6/20/2023

Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com



Background music by Michael Shuller Music

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the Shadows.

Speaker 2: 0:14

A Father Daughter True Crime Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:16

My name is Jameson Keyes. I'm Caroline. Good morning, caroline, good morning. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 0:24

Good, how are you?

Speaker 1: 0:26

I'm very good. Actually, it is my time of year now. It's beginning to get cold, so it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Speaker 2: 0:35

It's not my time of year, I do not like the cold weather at all and I'm actually going on a trip this week to get away from it. Today's trigger warning is the topic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The missing and murdered Indigenous women movement has been gaining a lot more traction in recent years. Bringing awareness to an issue is a great first step into solving a problem. However, this problem is so complex and spans hundreds of years. The problem starts all the way back when people came to colonize tribes in multiple different countries. Since then, indigenous women have been mistreated, sexually exploited, sexually assaulted and murdered in high numbers. This problem spans the globe and persists, threatening the very existence of Indigenous women. This is a recent case we'll be discussing today of a woman who is Indigenous that did go missing. Please listen closely. We'll be posting pictures on Instagram, so keep your eyes out for her. She really could be anywhere.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Autumn Shaganash was born on a native reservation in Canada. She was born on Constance Lake, burst Nation, in 1996. She was said to be very social, loved joking around and being on social media. Autumn was living with her sister, lily Ann, in Allendale. She and her mother, esther, were very close. They were always messaging each other back and forth on Facebook. Autumn was 26 at the time and this is this year, 2023. She was struggling with mental health issues like anxiety and depression. These issues are super common for my generation I think Also yours but they never got diagnosed. I think she was also getting treatment for an alcohol addiction.

Speaker 2: 2:23

This year, june 9th, 2023, autumn left her sister's house and her house around 9 pm. She told her sister she would be back later. A local convenience store caught her walking past on their security cameras, which we see later. After this is all transpired, she crossed the street from the store and met up with someone who was still unidentified, a man. A little later on, she texted her cousin saying she was going to a bar, and she didn't mention which one, just a general bar. Then, at 11 pm, she messages her sister, lillian, that she'll be out for the rest of the night and that she'll be home tomorrow. The next morning rolls around and Autumn asks her sister if she can come pick her up. Lillian responds three minutes later, but doesn't get a response back as to where she needs to pick her up from. Not only that, but the messages don't even go through. She assumes her sister's phone dies. She waits, and she waits, and she waits, but she never gets a response.

Speaker 1: 3:27

She didn't text the name of the guy or anything like that. I'm assuming.

Speaker 2: 3:29

I don't think so. Yeah, no, it would have been reported. I think. This is where I get confused, because later during the investigation, camera footage is found of Autumn, around the same time that she would be texting her sister a little bit after, and the footage shows her walking in a park called Sunnydale. Simultaneously in Sunnydale Park they were having a march to end ALS. So she's with a man who still has not been identified in this camera footage and she's holding a pair of skis Skis, yes. So it doesn't make any sense, like she just asked to get picked up and then doesn't respond and then is later, like a few minutes later, seen in a park. It seems like, you know, that wasn't part of her original plan right for that morning and she may have been there against her will. Also, I don't understand why she's holding skis, because it's summer and even in Canada there's no use for skis in June you know, I mean, that's true.

Speaker 2: 4:30

They didn't mention.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Really so weird.

Speaker 2: 4:35

So two days go by and no one's heard from autumn and one of her family members it's not mentioned who Goes to the police to report autumn as a missing person. They realized there's been no activity on her cards or her phone since she asked for her sister to pick her up. Autumn's family is able to get into her laptop and they start sifting through her messages on Facebook. They noticed that around the same time she messaged Lillian. Around that same time she was also messaging this other man. She didn't give that person that she was messaging the full address she was at, but she did mention the street name. Her family was also able to get into her snapchat account and and in some of the photos do you know how snapchat works, dad?

Speaker 1: 5:20

I did not.

Speaker 2: 5:22

So basically it's like a social media app where you send pictures back and forth like you'll just be doing everyday things.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And you know it's only temporary right, they disappear.

Speaker 2: 5:31

So, yes, but also they're in your like you can save them so they can be in your, in your storage, kind of like you have a storage of like your photos okay.

Speaker 2: 5:42

But if you send a picture to someone, it'll like they look at it for like 30 seconds and it goes away, or maybe 10 seconds or something like that, and it goes away. Interesting it is, it's interesting, I don't know. It's just like it's like messaging app but you can't save it. You can save it but you have to go in and save. It's not an automatic Thing anyways. So with that knowledge, her family was able to get into her snapchat account and In some of the photos she was sending there was a man, but they didn't know who. There was also the interior of a house in another one Of the photos, so she was in somebody's house. And then in another one of the photos all from that same night, some street signs were in the back.

Speaker 1: 6:20

So with the house, the man, the interior, the house and the street signs, they haven't been able to kind of pin things down at all.

Speaker 2: 6:26

No. So that is that's we're. We're getting to it. So autumn's family is very concerned about the possibility of human trafficking. The family feels like the I'm gonna try and pronounce is the berry be a our. Our ie berry police have a lack of urgency and Since they reported her missing, it's, I mean, it's been months and they haven't really found anything and it seems like they're Like there's some some things to follow up on. You know what I mean? The police have conducted some searches with canines and followed up on a few leads so far. I just don't understand, because it seems like they have like a lot more I stuff to go on.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Yeah, because it's in my understanding, because face.

Speaker 2: 7:11

They have the guy's face.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Right facial recognition, and you know how pictures work nowadays on an iPhone and so on. I mean you can kind of figure out sometimes where this is Right. That sounds really. It's really weird. Yeah, and you know Canadians, I mean, they have a modern police force, they have modern technology. I just don't understand how they can't narrow things down from all that information Exactly.

Speaker 2: 7:35

So we often see this with victims of color, especially indigenous women. They like people, just don't look for them as hard. Like it's just. It's a sound truth. The family has been searching for autumn themselves by placing posters around the area, organizing searches with community members and raising money to hire a private investigator to look into the disappearance of autumn.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Wow.

Speaker 2: 7:58

The Barry police have asked people to look through their camera rolls to see if they if they were at that park that day and to pay attention to the background. If they see anything that may be related to autumn or the man she was with, they ask that you contact the police. Of course, Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 8:14

Autumn, is 5'3", 130 pounds, brown eyes, black hair, black straight hair. She has a septum piercing and was last seen wearing a black hoodie and Puma slip on sandals. If you have any anything that may be helpful, even if you think it's small, please do not hesitate to call the Barry police service at 705-725-7025. Or you can call and tip anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

Speaker 1: 8:51

You're right about Native women, whether it be in the United States or in Canada.

Speaker 2: 8:56

Elsewhere, anywhere, like anywhere, yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:59

So I know that in different cases we looked at and different things we've seen of late. Murder is the third leading cause of death in Native women.

Speaker 2: 9:09

It's insane, it's terrifying. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: 9:12

I mean it's literally just behind cancer and heart disease. But that's so unacceptable I know.

Speaker 2: 9:20

And it's just like it's such a complex issue and obviously it boils down to racism and it boils down to the fact that they don't have a lot of resources, sometimes on these reservations, that's true and it's a complicated, multifaceted issue. I just don't think for law enforcement or countries, governments, it's not their high priority issue, which is sad, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 9:47

They're trying to do things to make it more of a topic of conversation. I remember there was a television show called Alaskan Daily or something like that. Yeah, I saw that, and this is the issue in the story line. Basically, they have a rash of Alaskan Native women that disappear and then, kind of to put it in a bright spotlight, they have one young Caucasian woman that's on a cruise ship who is trying to take some insane picture of her leaning on the rails and she falls in and no one sees her fall in, and so they pull in Coast Guard, they pull in the Navy, I mean, they just pull in all these things. They spend a million dollars looking for this lady, and they should, yeah, and they should For everyone. But for everyone, right, exactly right.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Do you recall the story we did about the lady that was taken in Somalia and how the United States government spent almost $100 million to rescue her? Every life is precious. Yeah, every life, as you said before, affects inner circles and kind of like the Venn diagram, they kind of interact with so many more lives, like it's like a network. It's a network, right. It's like a ripple in a pond, right. So it's a shame, and I really I thought it seems right.

Speaker 2: 11:06

With this case, it seems like it wouldn't be as difficult as it is right now, because this is in the year this year, 2023. Like I'm just like I'm really surprised that like they can't track her somehow. I feel like they can. That's what I'm gonna say. I feel like they can, I feel like they need to and I feel like they're just not approved to make specific like searches or like they need to go and get like warrants or something, and that's great, but I feel like there's just not movement, cause it's been how many months? Six.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Wow, five, five months.

Speaker 2: 11:42

Wow, and she had her phone on her. That's crazy, like they, I mean. I just don't understand that.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Right, right, surely they could track the phone, I mean, and listen. It's a whole different country. We kind of look at Canada and we think, oh, it's exactly like the United States. Of course it isn't exactly like, yeah, that's true, but they do have modern police forces, they do have the Royal Mounted Police. Yeah Right, I can't imagine. That's what I'm saying. It's a serious issue.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Well, I wonder if it's the same problem we have here in different reservations, in that there's a real territorial kind of a jurisdictional problem? Could be, yeah, because like local, if you are in the United States anyways, if you reside in a county outside of right, outside of the reservation right, then they can't really go into that area because it is a totally, you know, autonomous land. So the only people that can help out in the United States, for example, is the FBI, because that's the only other federal, because you know it's, it's. But I can't believe that that same thing happens everywhere. I would imagine Canada seems in some ways like a more progressive country, like they have national healthcare system and a lot of different things like that. So it's, it's. I can't, I can't fathom.

Speaker 2: 12:56

They also have a higher rape rate, though, than us Canada. No, Canada One in four women are sexually assaulted there. Wow, and one in five women here are sexually assaulted.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Wow.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Yeah, or will experience sexual assault over their lifetime. However, my view on that is because they are more comfortable reporting. So I'm not sure if it's actually happening there more often or if it's women are actually like reporting it and they feel like, oh, maybe they'll actually listen to me, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:30

It's probably a mix of things, but that's bad. But I will say, though, for this case, the family thinks that the Brary Police Service isn't doing enough. So I think it's not reservation police and it could be like some kind of territorial situation that, like they're bumping into.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:50

But yeah, it just it seems odd and I really hope that you know the Brary Police like get some warrants and start following these leads and figure out a way to find this woman, cause she's like yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1: 14:06

But the other thing is, I know this is a different country, right, and I know things are run differently, different places, but I haven't heard anything about this.

Speaker 2: 14:15

Yeah, literally same.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Right and we've done different. We've done different topics in terms of human trafficking and things like that. That is unfortunately a possibility in this case as well.

Speaker 2: 14:29

It seems like it is. I think it's pretty obvious that she didn't run away right because she was trying to get picked up and then now, like none of her credit cards, none of her, like her phone hasn't been used.

Speaker 1: 14:42

Yeah, that's scary.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Like that's the biggest thing, like she can't go somewhere without any money.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Right, exactly, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 14:50

So it wasn't her and she had like there was no history of her trying to run away or hurt herself. So that's not even a thought, really. It's just like something to check off, like that's not it. So it could be human trafficking.

Speaker 2: 15:07

I think, that's what it sounds like, because she was with a man, and typically that is the case with human trafficking. They like groom women into thinking that they're together or that they will be together, and then they drug them and they take them to other places and they exploit them and make money off of these women.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:29

It's just, it's literally disgusting.

Speaker 1: 15:31

It's worse than that. It's despicable. It's, yeah, but the you know the skis are an odd thing, right.

Speaker 2: 15:38

It is. It's so weird. I understand Like I wonder if, like she was drugged, he was like having her hold this, like just trying to like, get her to like, not, maybe they were tied to her. I'm wondering if they were tied to her so she wouldn't be able to run away, did she have them on her?

Speaker 1: 15:55

feet or she was carrying them.

Speaker 2: 15:56

She was carrying them, but what if they were tied to her stomach? You know what I mean. And it looked like she was carrying them because, like, obviously this, this camera footage isn't that great.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Or else they would be able to know who this guy is. Although there were pictures of him, apparently, in her Snapchat, I'm still confused. That's my thing, like I feel like he. This is my personal. There were no like nothing in the source material said anything about this, but I feel like it was probably used like to weigh her down, like you can't run away with skis on you.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Right, right, but you'll, or it could be something like and speculating here, obviously.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Yeah, we're speculating.

Speaker 1: 16:31

So you know like it's like well, you know what, tay, before we go, let me, let's.

Speaker 1: 16:35

I have these skis that I have to get in my storage unit, you know, or something like that True true, true, yeah, it could be just some sort of a, because a lot of times, like some of the most notorious and I'm not thinking this is what we're talking about here, but some of the notorious serial killers, for example, ted Bundy, had a little stick that he did he would like have like his arm, like pretend he was broke and trying to put a you know a couch or something in a truck or in a van. And you know, people are genuinely kind and helpful, right, and sometimes, unfortunately, he would say, oh, could you just help me get this, you know, into the car or whatever, and the person would be helping and by turning around and trying to help him, that would give him the opportunity to yeah, right, it's so scary.

Speaker 2: 17:18

So yeah, that's totally a possibility, but I do think. I do think, if that was the case, like, why did she stop texting her sister? Why did they stop going through?

Speaker 1: 17:27

Well.

Speaker 2: 17:27

Because it was three minutes after she sent that text and that wasn't when she was already in the park. That was later.

Speaker 1: 17:33

Well, if you take the battery out or destroy the phone, that ends the signal, right?

Speaker 2: 17:37

Yeah, but why would she like willingly go if she doesn't know where your phone is? You know what I mean. Unless he accidentally did something to her phone and she was like oh man, okay, and he's like I'll just drop you off. I could see that happening too. Like I'll just drop you off at home.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Sorry, I accidentally like ran over your phone or whatever happened to her phone and then he's like I just have to make this quick stop for you know literally oh my gosh, you know the Brewer police need to get on it, Because why are we sitting here over making up stories, possibilities, Like, and you know what I mean. Hopefully that hopefully they're working in the background on something. I really, really, really hope that that's the case. Because, six months is a long time. It is Anything could happen.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Well, listen, in six days she could be on the other side of the world.

Speaker 2: 18:26

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 18:27

Six months is just yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:28

It's forever. And it's so sad that you know. Her family and her loved ones are trying to find her and not getting any closer to it, it seems, and it's just it's heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 18:39

We will have pictures up on the Instagram page and on our webpage and if you do have any information, you know, please contact the police department there and we'll stay on top of this. Let's make sure we keep our eye on this too, to see what we can do to you know. Find out more information.

Speaker 2: 18:55

That's a great idea. And again, those numbers are 707-725-7025 for the Brary police. And then crime stoppers, where you can anonymously leave a tip about this case or any other case, is 1-800-222-8477. Follow the show on whatever streaming site you're listening on.

Speaker 1: 19:21

And remember.

Speaker 2: 19:22

all of the source material will be available in the show notes and follow us on Instagram at whatwelewsintheshadows, and let us know if you want to hear a specific case.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Or if you just want to give us some feedback.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday. Okay, bye.