| A hashtag and a political campaign have brought attention to the epidemic of violence, but a New Mexico woman is fighting case by case.  Lela Mailman, the mother of Melanie James, who went missing, embraces her attorney, Darlene Gomez, in Window Rock, Arizona, on January 13th. | Photograph by Sharon Chischilly for The New Yorker For more than a decade, a social-media campaign has been raising awareness about the shocking number of Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the United States who have gone missing or been murdered—as well as the disproportionately high rates at which Native women experience interpersonal violence over all. Despite some government action, this increase in understanding has not yet led to meaningfully better outcomes. As Rachel Monroe reports from New Mexico, some people are fighting the problem on a more granular level, one case at a time. Monroe profiles the attorney Darlene Gomez, who has served as the pro-bono advocate in twenty such cases. “I’m a fund-raiser, I’m a therapist, I’m a policymaker, I’m an advocate, I’m an activist,” Gomez explains, of her work transforming an online hashtag into change on the ground. “We have to push,” she adds. “It’s constantly pushing and making a scene—I hate to say that, but we have to make a scene.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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