When Lynette Greybull was 17, she lived on the streets. She said she was lucky friends took her in and kept her from falling into a life of sex trafficking.
“I became really close friends with young women that were trafficked,” Greybull said. “They weren’t human trafficking victims to me. These were friends. And some are not here today.”
Greybull became an advocate for young women like them and started Not Our Native Daughters, an initiative against sex trafficking. Greybull said since there are few opportunities on the reservation, young girls are lured into trafficking, often through social media.
“The devil never comes dressed as a devil,” Greybull said. “They come in their trickery, in their craftiness, in their charisma, their promises.”
Greybull said traffickers prey on girls, mostly, many of whom already have been sexually abused, don’t have decent family support or are in the foster care system. Native American children enter foster care at twice the rate of all children in the U.S., according to a Government Accountability Office study. Greybull said many of these young people have to fight for shelter, food and protection.