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Marcey Blanks\u2019s mother is still waiting for the trial of the man charged with her daughter\u2019s murder.<\/strong><\/p>\n In the early hours of November 16, 2016, Blanks\u2019s attacker\u00a0raped her, stabbed her 89 times and set her home in Robeson County on fire.<\/a>\u00a0Blanks managed to get up, walk to her neighbor\u2019s home, and tell him the name of her attacker. She died on his doorstep. She was 18 years old.<\/p>\n Over five years later, the case hasn\u2019t gone to trial due to a series of delays by the defendant.<\/p>\n So, when the Red Justice Project<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>podcast featured Blanks\u2019s case last year, her mother, Mary Sue Hunt, was thrilled. The podcast\u2019s focus on her daughter\u2019s death, which otherwise received little media coverage, helps keep interest in the case alive, she said. At the time of Blanks\u2019s murder, several local news outlets didn\u2019t even spell Blanks\u2019s name correctly in their brief reports.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a good girl,\u201d said Hunt. \u201cHow hard she fought that morning\u2014that\u2019s how hard I have to fight for her.\u201d<\/p>\n The Red Justice Project<\/em> is a true-crime podcast devoted to bringing attention to the widespread violence against indigenous people in North Carolina and beyond. Brittany Hunt and Chelsea Locklear, both Lumbee women like Blanks, started the project during the summer of 2020. With more than 5,000 downloads, the podcast has reached listeners across over 40 states and 60 different countries\u2014and victims\u2019 families are grateful for the renewed attention their loved ones are receiving.<\/p>\n \u201cThat story should have made national news,\u201d said Hunt, a former social worker at Blanks\u2019s high school. \u201cIt\u2019s traumatic. I think a lot of families feel a lot of anger around that, that people didn\u2019t care more.\u201d<\/p>\n On the podcast, host Brittany Hunt takes the time to cry, grieve, and remember who Blanks was with Blanks\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n \u201cThat episode was kind of a turning point in our podcast and also in helping us think about how we can give families the dignity and respect that they deserve, even though they have not been given that from the media,\u201d Hunt said.<\/p>\n Indigenous communities are spread widely across North Carolina. The only federally recognized indigenous tribe in the state is the Eastern Band of Cherokee in western North Carolina, but the state also recognizes seven other tribes, including the Lumbee. With over 70,000 members, the Lumbee are the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River.\u202f<\/p>\n The Lumbee primarily live in Robeson County, where many of the cases featured on the podcast took place. Robeson County had the highest violent crime rate<\/a>\u00a0in the state in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n But violence against indigenous women isn\u2019t unique to Robeson County or North Carolina. Indigenous women across the United States are over three times<\/a>\u00a0more likely than other women to experience violent crime in their lifetime, and\u00a0nearly half<\/a> of indigenous women in the United States have been raped. In North Carolina alone, there have been around 90 unsolved cases of missing or murdered indigenous women since 1994.<\/p>\n These statistics are likely much higher, Locklear said. Victims from tribes that aren\u2019t federally recognized aren\u2019t counted in national statistics, she said, so Blanks\u2019s case wasn\u2019t federally acknowledged.<\/p>\n Additionally, many indigenous victims are misrepresented as being nonindigenous or aren\u2019t even given the ability to be represented as indigenous on police forms.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Native American\u2019 sometimes is not an option,\u201d Locklear said. \u201cYou have to go into another box.\u201d<\/p>\n Locklear had long been a fan of popular true-crime podcasts. But she noticed that most true-crime podcasts primarily featured white victims\u2014so she set out with Hunt to give their own community the attention they felt it deserved.<\/p>\n Locklear, 32, works for an investment management firm in Raleigh, and Hunt, 31, is a postdoctoral research associate at Duke University, where she researches how education disenfranchises indigenous history and affects indigenous culture.\u202f<\/p>\n The two Lumbee women met on Facebook, which is a popular way for indigenous people to meet members of their extended communities, Hunt said. They searched for cases to cover by sifting through social media, news articles, and police reports and talking to victims\u2019 family members. Hunt and Locklear record the episodes on their own computers and Locklear\u2019s husband edits the audio files.<\/p>\n Hunt and Locklear are now planning the second season of the podcast. It\u2019s taken a while for the pair to get started\u2014telling their community\u2019s stories has taken a toll on the next season.<\/p>\n \u201cSome nights, I wouldn\u2019t get sleep, and I started dreaming about them,\u201d Hunt said.<\/p>\n Casey Elaine Young\u2014featured on episode 13<\/a>\u2014went to high school with Hunt. She was found dead in the woods a few hundred yards from her home in Robeson County on June 15, 2009. She was 21.\u202f<\/p>\n \u201cCasey was humble, kind, a great basketball player, and a good leader,\u201d Hunt said on the episode.<\/p>\n Young had a gunshot wound to her head and her hands were missing. The police ruled the case a suicide, but the gunshot wound trajectory came from her nondominant hand. Friends and family believe Young was murdered. Her aunt, Angela Baxley, has been fighting for justice ever since. Baxley\u2019s daughter, who discovered Young\u2019s body, was close with Young.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a horror story for my daughter to see her cousin and best friend laying there like that,\u201d Baxley said. \u201cMy daughter went through a lot of dark periods.\u201d<\/p>\n Baxley is secretary of Shatter the Silence<\/a>, an organization that advocates for justice for missing and murdered indigenous people in North Carolina. Red Justice<\/em> works closely with Shatter the Silence, which was founded by Shelia Price, the mother of Rhonda Jones, a Lumbee woman whose body was found in a trash can in Robeson County. Jones\u2019s murder remains unsolved.<\/p>\n Shatter the Silence holds rallies and marches and supports victims\u2019 families. The organization\u2019s Facebook group has over 9,000 members, and Baxley credits Red Justice<\/em> for helping to add to that number.\u202f<\/p>\n Baxley said officials are taking a closer look into Young\u2019s death. The Robeson County Sheriff\u2019s Office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n Baxley is thankful to Hunt and Locklear for humanizing the victims they feature on the podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cI have nothing but love and respect for them because they\u2019ve brought an issue back to the forefront of the county,\u201d Baxley said. \u201cThey put a face to these women and to these men.\u201d<\/p>\n To describe violence against indigenous women as an epidemic\u2014a short-term, isolated problem\u2014does not do justice to what continues to take place in indigenous communities, Hunt wrote in an\u00a0article for the North Carolina Medical Journal<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in November 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problems that Indigenous women face are neither short-term nor isolated. These were the same problems faced by their mothers and grandmothers before them, the same problems that their own daughters and granddaughters face now,\u201d Hunt wrote.<\/p>\n The love that Hunt and Locklear have for their community is what keeps them going, despite how difficult it can be, Hunt said. Both women are still deeply connected to their indigenous ancestry and their community.<\/p>\n \u201cWith love comes this great sense of injustice for what\u2019s happening in the community,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cIf we didn\u2019t love it, we probably wouldn\u2019t care so much. And so that keeps us going.\u201d<\/p>\n Hunt said most of the response to the podcast has come from North Carolina, but the pair has received messages from as far away as Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cOur most common messages are: \u2018When is season two?\u2019\u201d Hunt said. \u201cThe next one is: \u2018Can you cover my family member\u2019s case?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n UNC Media Hub is a collection of students from the various concentrations in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media working together to create integrated and free multimedia packages covering stories from around North Carolina.<\/em><\/p>\n Support independent local journalism.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Join the\u00a0INDY Press Club<\/a><\/em>\u00a0to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.<\/em><\/p>\n Comment on this story at\u00a0<\/em>arts@indyweek.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\u201cI started dreaming about them\u201d<\/strong><\/small><\/h2>\n
\u201cA horror story\u201d\u202f<\/h2>\n
\u201cLove for our community\u201d<\/h2>\n