In the West, as in the rest of the nation, Native Americans are the racial group most likely to be killed by law enforcement, at a rate three times higher than whites. In 2016, an estimated 21 Native Americans fell victim to police violence, according to The Counted, a database that tracks people killed by U.S. law enforcement personnel; the previous year, 13 died. The deaths have ignited the same outrage that erupted in recent years following the shooting deaths of numerous African-Americans by law enforcement. Following the Black Lives Matter model, a Native Lives Matter movement has spread, calling attention to what Chase Iron Eyes, a Lakota attorney and activist, calls America’s “undeclared race war.” For police, Covarrubias’ death was a rare tragedy — a product of the split second decision-making that law enforcement officers must make to protect others and themselves. For many Native Americans in Washington and elsewhere, however, his death was an echo of the violence they had endured for centuries.

In the weeks and months following her brother’s death, Lanna Covarrubias kept coming back to one question: Daniel had just left the hospital. He was in pain. Why, she wondered, did the officers take such aggressive action?

That question has reverberated among Native Americans both on and off reservations in recent years. While Native Americans make up less than one percent of the population, they account for nearly two percent of police killings.  Several factors contribute to that statistic, including the lack of mental health services (nearly half of the victims had histories of mental illness) and the often-strained relationship between Native Americans and non-native police. Many tribes are under the jurisdiction of nearby non-tribal authorities, leaving cities and counties struggling to come up with the additional policing resources. According to researchers at Claremont Graduate University, 83 percent of the deadly encounters between Native Americans and law enforcement involved non-tribal police.

Yet, for every black Michael Brown who makes the headlines, a victim of police violence in Indian Country remains invisible. The Claremont study found that between May 2014 and October 2015, major U.S. newspapers mentioned just two of the 29 verifiable Native American deaths at the hands of police during that period. The real number of deaths was likely even higher, says Jean Schroedel, one of the researchers, noting that Native deaths often go unrecorded.  Many live on remote reservations or in rural border towns, which don’t get as much media coverage as big cities. In urban areas, where more than half of Native Americans reside, they are often identified as another race. Covarrubias, for instance, was identified as Latino even though he is a member of the Suquamish nation.