Building Trust: Using DNA to Address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) Crisis

Laura: Well, hello Mike and Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re really excited that you were able to present at our 35th anniversary of ISHI, and we’re here to talk about that. But before we get started, I would love each of you just to give us a little brief background about your professional history and anything else you’d like to share.

Mark: Yeah, I’ll go ahead and start. Thank you. My name is Mark Pooley. I’m actually from Arizona. I retired from law enforcement about four years ago, and in retirement, I had to retire because I ended up getting cancer, which broke my back in ten places. It’s a cancer called multiple myeloma. But that really got me on my journey to do what I’m doing now.

I’m Native American, Navajo and Hopi, and I learned, even though I heard about it in the background about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People movement, I didn’t know about it. And so, when I learned about it, I got more involved. And that’s really what got me on to doing this. Coming from law enforcement, I was able to do major cases like homicide and missing persons. And one thing I learned, and you’ll hear me throughout this interview; you’ll need two things to find missing people, which is resources and technology. And that’s what I what I’m excited to work with. Doctor Coble and the center for Human Identification is to bring that DNA technology to our native people that are missing. But I guess my background is law enforcement.

Laura: Thank you for sharing that. I’m very sorry about the multiple myeloma, but it’s wonderful to see you here.

Mike: Okay. So, I’m Mike Coble. I’m the sort of scientist and have been in forensics for the last 26 years or so now, and, you know, started off as a student working in a lab and then decided to continue on and get my degrees and then started working in the lab and then became more into management. And so now I’m the executive director for the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

Laura: We’ve been lucky enough to talk to you multiple times, so we’re happy to have you back. We’d love to hear more about the MMIP nationwide strategy that you’ve really you’ve been working on, and you spoke about. Anyone who wants to start?

Mark: Yeah. I could go ahead and start. I’ve been working with the center for about a year and a half now. But like I said, I’ve been doing this work for about four years. And really, the strategy that you’re asking about, a lot of it has to do with trust. If you don’t have a trust of the native community, you’re not going to be very successful.

There’s 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and we’re all different. We have different languages, different customs. We grow up in different regions. So, if you just have a cookie cutter way of this is how you do it, it’s not going to work. So, the main thing is you have to meet the people in their own land and their own meetings and their own community to build that trust. And it has to be continuous. If it’s just one time, it’s not going to work. You have to continually meet with them. And so that’s one of the things when I started working with the center is to build on that trust. Because this technology, it’s not new, but it is. And that’s one of the things is when something new that you bring to the people, they need to trust you. And so, our strategy really is reaching out to the native communities to build that trust, but to also share with them and invite them to use this technology.

Mike: I think Mark makes an excellent point. When we applied for this funding to be able to do this work about two, two and a half years ago, we realized that in order to be successful, we need someone who can not only just reach out but be a part of the communities that we’re trying to reach. And so as soon as we were awarded, I started reaching out to try to find someone who would fit that, who would be a perfect fit. Hopefully someone with law enforcement background, because part of Mark’s job is talking with law enforcement. And of course, I think it’s much easier for someone in law enforcement to talk to these people than a scientist, and then also talking to those victim advocates, trying to get them, you know, to trust and understand what we’re doing. And so, we were very fortunate to be able to find Mark. And he’s made the difference. We’ve had very good success so far and we hope to continue along this path.

Laura: I think that’s amazing, and we’ve had a few interviews in the past. And when you do talk about how many tribes there are and everybody is different and different language. So, it’s not new, but it is new. So really you have to have strategies that address everything. With that in mind, what are the goals of the initiative and how do you do that on a large scale?

Mike: Well, part of the goal, of course, is to try to help with the really the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous peoples. And one of the things Mark talked about was the resources. You need resources. And traditionally, the American Indian Native Alaskan communities have been somewhat neglected and have not had a lot of resources available to them. So part of that is, again, going into the communities and letting them understand this is what we can do. Reaching out to law enforcement and medical examiners, saying, you know, you have remains that you think may be Native American ancestry. Give them to us. We can test it. So, the goals of the grant are to provide free, no cost testing of these skeletal remains and family references to try to make those associations.

Laura: Yeah, that’s really remarkable. How do you coordinate all of that? I mean, you have law enforcement, the community engagement piece and then the forensic science piece.

Mark: So far, what I’ve been doing is I’ve been working primarily with three states with high populations of Native Americans: Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. And when I do that, I first reach out to the medical examiners throughout those states. Sometimes they’re in counties, but I let them let them… Help them be aware of the program that we’re doing. And one thing I’m finding is when medical examiners find out about the free part of providing this DNA, they understand very, very quickly and they grab on to it.
And so, working with medical examiners is not the hard part.

The hard part is working with the tribal, state and federal partners. Because they haven’t had access to these type of testings, they are sort of standoff. They sort of wait and they want to see, hey, who else is doing this? And that’s where that trust also among law enforcement, I come from law enforcement, I know that I know sometimes we want to say we’re big-time innovators, but we usually wait. We want to see, hey, who’s doing this first?

Once they see the success or if a department has the courage to implement it and they start finding success, they start sharing it. And that’s one thing that we’ve we have found with law enforcement. The cases that we’re doing, we’re finding people and these, some of these, these people have been missing for years, if not decades. And we’ll go into that a little bit more. But that’s the exciting part.

Now law enforcement is wanting to work with us. I’m not saying that they didn’t want to before, but we’re giving them the opportunity. I’ll give you an example. There’s a tribal law enforcement in Arizona. In law enforcement, you always do something that’s called the debriefing. Like, hey, we do this action or this case or whatever it is, and then we do a follow up like a debriefing. Hey, what could we have done better? Or what did we like? And so, I was working with this and still working with this department, and we started having success. And I remember when we first started working with them, they were sort of like, “you know, the native people, they’re not going to work with us.” What we found or what they found. This is about eight months later. I was talking to several of the investigators in a in a virtual meeting, and almost every single one. They said, “Mr. Pooley, what this program has done, where we thought it was going to divide the community and law enforcement, that wasn’t the case. It actually brought us together. The people started to come to us and say, can we have our DNA tested to help find our missing relative?”

And the exciting part is law enforcement, the detectives, one of them, he says, “it gave me empowerment because now I have the resources to do these cases.” And now this particular department is a stronghold in what we’re doing. And so, it’s really exciting.

Laura: That is very exciting. I mean, and then to be able to, you know, share that with others and show how it works and how successful it is. Let’s talk a little bit about… Maybe you can give some examples of, you know, sort of the process of what happens with each case. Like you said, there’s a staggering number. So, you know, how has it worked? So other people who are watching this, maybe in other parts of the country, will be interested in learning more.

Mark: So, I guess the process of what I do is first I reach out to the medical examiner and we find out, hey, how many remains that you have that were found in Indian country, or that your forensic anthropologist believes are Native American or Alaskan Native? Those remains, if they fit one or both of those criteria, we’ll be able to test those at our center for free. Now, on the flip side with law enforcement is really educating law enforcement to say, hey, what missing cases do you have? What are some of your long term? Those are the ones that we’re really looking for. And then we actually provide a training video for them to look to obtain a buccal swab, a saliva sample from the family members of that missing person. They package it as evidence properly. They send it to our lab, the center, and we are able to put both the unidentified human remains, the UHR, and the family reference sample into the main database called CODIS. That’s where the associations happen, and that’s how we’re finding people. Yeah.

Mike: And on the science side, exactly as Mark said, it’s a matter of being able to find those UHRs, the unidentified human remains. And then we’ll do the typical same processing that we do for any unidentified human remains: we’ll extract the DNA, we’ll develop STR profiles and mitochondrial DNA profiles, and then we’ll upload those into CODIS. And then we wait for the family references and we’ll process those with the autosomal STRs and mito as well. And from that point, we then let CODIS do its job. And CODIS is very effective if you have both parts of the puzzle there in the pedigree. So, we’ve had, again, as Mark said, very good success in being able to resolve some of these long term unresolved cases.

Laura: Perhaps you guys could share some of the examples. I know you’ve had so many successes without giving away personal details, but just a little bit about what’s been happening on the ground.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I want to let you know that so far we’ve actually have had 20 identifications, which is awesome. Again, primarily in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. And many of these cases, in fact, three of them are decades old. We have a man out of Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation. He’s been missing over 25 years, and he was identified through a CODIS family reference sample. We had another woman out of Seminole Nation. She has been missing since 1983, almost 41 years. And so those two just in Oklahoma alone. Phenomenal story.

We recently had one out of Arizona, out of Maricopa County. She’s an Apache woman. She also has been missing since 1983. And now in this particular case, you know, there were a lot of the medical examiners and the detectives, they really put their whole heart into it. And they spent years trying to use different DNAs, different DNA labs, different techniques. And they just couldn’t… The sample was not as good. Recently we tried another time and our center was able to find it to get an association with the missing woman and her deceased child. And so, you know, we don’t have enough time, but there are just… I said there’s 20 people missing, but each individual has a story, each individual has a name. And when you really go into those stories, it really makes the work that we’re doing how awesome it is. We are finding great success and it just takes time and, and it’s continuing to do great things.

Mike: I think one thing that, you know, Mark highlights is that we really have been focused on this effort for really only about the last year and a half. It’s taken some time to get, as Mark said, it, it takes time to for the outreach. And he’s much more effective when he goes in person and talks to people rather than some scientists on a phone call saying, “hey, you know, do you have any remains? Do you have any families?” You know, it’s not the same. And I think that the success that we’re seeing is really just the start. I think this is a model for us to be able to do a lot of good for Native American communities using this grant.

Laura: Absolutely. I mean, I think 20 identifications in the time that you’ve had, you know, given that outreach is so important at the beginning, I think you’re right, in person, you know, it always trumps everything else if you can make that happen. And on the other side, are you involved then with, you know, sharing the information that you found? I mean, people being missing for 43 years or longer or any amount of time. I can’t imagine that the families have been waiting so long for an answer and it’s very sad the answer that they’re getting. But I don’t know if I like to use the word closure, but it can provide some sense of relief.

Mark: Yeah. You know, I use the word resolution.

Laura: Resolution.

Mark: A resolution to what happened to the missing person. The two women that I spoke about from Oklahoma and Arizona, those are both homicide investigations, so I won’t go into the detail because that’s for that department to share that. But I will say this, 43 years or 41 years is a long time and sad to say, but many of the parents of those people, they’re deceased. Not knowing what happened. And so that that is the heartbreak of the story. Now, on the other hand, there have been family members that are given that resolution, that identification, and they are so grateful. In fact, those are some of our biggest advocates to our own people, because, look, they found my son. They found my daughter and they told the people. And that’s very, very impactful.

Laura: And it sounds like you’ve had increasing engagement as this has been happening. You talked about building trust, and what better way than to have people be able to share their stories with others and let them know that this is really working, and it’s done in a respectful way? Maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, how you see this impacting future investigations and how you can continue to drive this change going forward?

Mike: Well, one thing that is we’re hoping for making the change last into the future is for law enforcement knowing that they have this resource, not letting the case get so quote unquote cold that they then, you know, again, as Mark said, you then start losing members of those families that are no longer able to give their DNA for identifying their missing loved one. So, the law enforcement and investigators could reach out soon to people who have missing loved ones to get their DNA and to get it into the CODIS, you know, part of the pedigree trees and be able to build those. And then hopefully we can find those UHRs to be able to compare to the families. So, we’re hoping that will have a huge impact moving forward.

Laura: Absolutely. And you talked about the FRS and the UHRs and then inputting that into CODIS. I have different challenges, you know, how and how do you overcome them as you’re working through this?

Mike: Well, obviously, you know, when you have samples, DNA or bone samples that are aged and potentially, as Mark said, we’re talking about Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico. They’re very hot climates, especially in the summer, and there’s a lot of degradation, so there are challenges. Again, I won’t go into many details, but Mark mentioned the case, a case from Arizona in which multiple labs had tried to work to get a profile, and I think they did get a profile, but it was very difficult to get that reference to work. And so, we were successful again. We feel also we’re benefiting because we’re being challenged with trying to get DNA from these samples that have, you know, challenged degraded DNA as well. So, it’s really making us stay at the top of our game.

Laura: Absolutely. Degraded samples are extremely challenging. It sounds like you’ve had great success so far.

Mark: You know, to piggyback that, that question of some of the challenges of getting family reference samples, just like Mike said on the on the science part, that’s what the lab experiences in the community, among the people. Usually when I speak at group meetings or conferences or trainings, especially when I, when I speak to the native people and the native community, it’s always the last or the second to the last question. There’s always a Native American that says, “well, Mr. Pooley, our native people are very traditional, and we don’t trust government to take our DNA. And they said, do you have an answer for that?”

Now, myself, being Native American, talking to my own people, I tell them I don’t have an answer for you that would even satisfy that question for me. I said, but let me tell you a story. Our native people, we tell stories. That’s how we learn. It passes down from generation to generation. So I tell my brother or sister, I said, let me tell you this story. It’s true. I said, before I started working for the center, I had my own nonprofit where I met with families. I laughed and cried with them, looking for their loved one. So, I built those relationships already. There was this one family in particular. Their brother and son was missing and we couldn’t find them on my own, with my own organization.

When I got this job with the Center of Human Identification, the sister reaches out to me, and I was still learning about DNA. And I said, and she says, “can me and my sister give a family reference sample to help find my brother?” And I say, yes, we can. I said, but it would be better if we had your mother and father, or if your brother had children to get those family reference samples first. And she said, “my brother didn’t have any children.” And then I said, is your mother or father alive? And she said, “well, my father’s passed away, but my mother’s alive.” And I said, well, talk with her and see if we can get that sample now.

I didn’t say this at the beginning, but whenever we do family reference samples, we always have to get written consent from the family. We don’t just take it. They understand what they’re doing. They give us written consent and then we’re able to collect. Or law enforcement is able to collect that sample without that consent form. We will not test it. And it has to be filled out properly. So, the daughter said, “well, my mom is an elder, she only speaks Navajo and she’s very traditional, and I already know she’s going to say no.” And I said, well, can you just ask her? And if she says no, we’ll honor, honor those, those desires and then we’ll test you and your sister.

And she said, okay, let me call you back in an hour. Well, not even a couple minutes later, she calls me back and she says, “Mr. Pooley, And she sort of got choked up. She said, my mom’s going to give her DNA.” And I and I asked, I said, well, I thought she was very traditional. And this is where she got choked up. She said, “Mr. Pooley, my mom said, I will do anything to find my son that has great power.” The mother did give her family reference sample. The sisters gave the family reference sample. And just about three months later, actually six months later, but just about three months ago, we identified her son as one of those unidentified human remains, and they were able to bring their brother and son home. So, it does work.

And that’s what I share with our with my native people is look, this does work. Don’t let our traditions or what we perceive others in our tribe think they want. No, no, no. Let them decide for themselves. Let them make that decision. And our people are smart people when they’re given the correct information and they have someone that they trust, they will give those samples. And I’ve seen it. And that’s the exciting part of working with the community and building them, giving them the power to do what they need to do.

Laura: That is an amazing story, and I think a testament to the way that you’re approaching this and able to let people know that you’re going to do this in a way that aligns with their values and history and traditions and and really respect their wishes while trying to provide resolution. What else about the program have we missed? Before I ask you about your next steps.

Mark: Right now I’m working with those three tribes. Those are my strongholds. I’m trying to build other networks right now. Right now, I’m working with Alaska and trying to get into Washington State, and we’re starting to make some success and it just takes time. I’m really hoping that this program continues. Now, one of the things that I will share with you again, this is me on my soapbox to my native people. I tell our people, you have to have a vision of where you want to go. You have to not just do something just because. But that vision really guides you of where you want to go.

When I first started doing this work, even before I started working with the center, I told our native people, I said, we natives are always last. We’re always last. I want to change that narrative. I want us to be first. I want us to come from the back of the line to the front. This program, by the way, that has been funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. I am grateful to them, because now they have brought us from the back to the front. Right now, this program is only to test Native Americans or Alaskan Natives.
And we’re I’m hoping that that will not just change for the native community, but other communities: the black community, the Hispanic community, the Asian community. Those are the communities that have been forgotten. I’m really hoping that this program sets that example.

And it is setting that example to where we can start to test more of our other brothers and sisters who are missing. I’ve worked with other nationalities besides Native Americans. And one thing I’ve learned, it doesn’t matter what color you are. It doesn’t matter what culture. When you miss someone, someone’s missing. It’s been described to me that there’s a piece right in the center of your gut that is missing, and you can’t fill it. When they’re identified, it fills it. Still hurtful, but there’s not that emptiness, that yuckiness.

And so, for me, I say, tell our native people, let us show the people again. My vision is one day I tell people I want the non-native world to come to us natives and they say, “how did you do it?” And my answer is through resources and technology. That is how we’re going to change the story in Indian country concerning our missing and murdered indigenous people.

Laura: I don’t think that could be more well said. And what a remarkable model that seems like it’s not even, you know, there’s no word for it. It’ss really remarkable what you’re doing.

Mike: I’d like to say that, you know, I wish my wish is to be able to use technology to clone Mark so that we could have, you know, the passion that Mark brings to his job and representing our center. But I also would like to sort of as my, you know, forensic brothers and sisters out there, you are maybe in touch with law enforcement, with cold case units, that or medical examiners that have. And maybe just to let them know that there is this resource. If there is, as Mark said, an anthropologist who has determined that this these remains are likely Native American. Reach out to us and Mark will do the rest. He’ll take care of it. We just, you know, he’s limited in being able to reach to all 576 tribes that are out there. And so, if there are forensic scientists who can give us some leads, that would be amazing.

Laura: How should they reach out to you? Well, we absolutely want to include that in this video.

Mike: So, you can always go to our website, the Center for Human Identification. Just Google Center for Human Identification and University of North Texas Health Science Center, and you’ll find contact information for the center. And we’ll get the email to Mark one way or the other.

Laura: That sounds wonderful. You covered this really in depth. So, we may be repeating it. And I don’t need to ask, but what do you hope is the long term? Let’s look far into the future, the long term impact of this program.

Mike: Well, I hope that, as Mark said, I hope that the funding continues and I think that’s something that’s sorely missing, is the funding to be able to test unidentified human remains. It’s very limited at the moment. And so, this grant from BJA has given us that opportunity. And again, the grant that we have is a nationwide grant. There are other grants in this program for missing and unidentified human remains that are more targeted toward state or local. So, local labs can apply and take care of the unidentified remains that they have in their local jurisdiction. But we hope that this continues as a nationwide program. And I think, as Mark said, the next step would be great to be able to reach out to other underserved communities to help them with the… And it’s seriously an epidemic of missing and murdered people in every in those underserved communities.

Laura: Well, I think the success that you’re having, I certainly hope that brings more money, more grants, you know, everything you need to do that really important work. And we are so honored that you’re talking about it here with us, not only in a presentation, but here on camera as well. I have one last question. Mike, I know you have attended ISHI before. Mark, have you been here before?

Mark: This is actually my first time attending ISHI, so I’m really excited. And, it’s a great conference. It’s huge. I mean, just walking the halls, meeting other people throughout the day is an amazing experience. Yeah, I think if you’re in this type of work, you need to come to this conference to build your network to see what’s coming in the future. It’s really exciting. But thank you for the invitation and we’re excited we’re here.

Laura: No, we’re so excited to have you here. And I’m so happy. It’s been such a great experience. It’s an amazing community. And Mike, how about you. We’ll talk about what brings you back and maybe what you’re looking forward to this year.

Mike: I think that there’s, you know, there’s some meetings where it’s the science is always at the forefront. And so, we have that here at ISHI. But I think also something that makes this conference so special is that you get the human side as well. And so, this this week we saw an exoneration happen in real time. And it was a very special moment. And that’s what we tend to expect. And I think that’s what really makes ISHI a special meeting for the forensic scientist.

Laura: Well, I think we’re very lucky to have the professionals that we do have coming back every year and new faces doing amazing work. So, we are honored to have you both. And thank you so much for taking out some time with us.

Mike: Thank you, thank you, thank you.