Sister of Indigenous woman in unsolved slaying didn’t know she was missing

The last time Ernestine Morning Owl spoke with her younger sister, Mavis Nelson, was in April, she said.

For two months, she had no clue that anything was amiss with Nelson, 56, assuming she was busy with her job working the front desk at a rehabilitation center in Seattle.

But in June, one of Nelson’s children called Morning Owl, who lives in Oregon near the Washington border, to say Seattle police had identified human remains in a ravine as belonging to his mother. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a homicide and said she suffered multiple sharp-force wounds.

“It was devastating,” Morning Owl said, “because, first of all, I didn’t even know she was missing.”

As police continue their investigation, family and friends of Nelson, who was a tribal member of the Yakama Nation, are speaking publicly in an effort to bring her killer to justice.

But they wonder why there doesn’t seem to be sustained urgency in Nelson’s case or awareness about it in a state that has launched the nation’s first alert system for missing Indigenous people and convened a statewide task force on the issue afflicting Native American communities.

Roxanne White, a friend of Nelson’s and founder of a grassroots group in Washington state that advocates on behalf of missing and murdered Indigenous people, said Nelson’s death has begun to garner attention this week but only because her friends and family have been speaking out, not because of law enforcement.

“I’m hoping that somebody goes back to this timeline and somebody remembers something,” White said. “All this time lost is crucial. We need to put these pieces of the puzzle together so that we can end this. Her family needs to see whoever did this get caught.”

Authorities have not said when Nelson was first reported missing, although Morning Owl believes Nelson’s co-workers would have at least done so because “she never missed work.” Police released information about the case on June 21, a day after Nelson’s body was discovered, but did not provide her name.

In an email Friday, Seattle police said the department “does not release the names of crime victims,” but they may be provided by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Nelson’s family and friends say they have lingering questions, including how long her body may have been outdoors, and don’t know whether police are any closer to identifying a suspect. White said by not…