'You're Going to Know Who My Daughter Was': Families Demand Justice for Missing and Murdered...

When Tammy Carpenter talks about her daughter, her posture straightens and laugh lines earned in better years brighten her eyes. She mimics Angela’s playful, rapid-fire way of speaking, and recalls her joyful giggle and generous heart.

“She was so caring and giving,” Carpenter said. “Very helpful to the family.”

Carpenter raised Angela and her younger brother, Richie, on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Humboldt County — surrounded by big rivers, forests and a loving network of aunties and cousins. Carpenter said that Angela was proud of her Hoopa culture and other Indigenous roots: part Mojave, through her maternal grandmother, and on her dad’s side, part Karuk and Yurok, neighboring tribes in California’s rural north.

But Angela would join a much darker lineage — one that stretches back to colonization: Indigenous women disappearing, never to be found, and others turning up dead. Most cases, going cold. In September of 2018, Angela was shot to death at age 26. Her case is open but remains unsolved.