In honor of Native American Heritage Month I’m featuring a Native American missing person for every day in the month of November. Today’s missing person is Marion Gonangnan, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from Anchorage in 2003. I don’t have tribal info for her. The site Justice For Native Women says she had spent a lot of her life in the lower 48 states, was unhappy in Alaska and wanted to return to California, where she’d spent her younger years.
Marion may have been suffering from an ectopic pregnancy at the time of her disappearance. Basically, that happens when the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube rather than the uterus. The only treatment is to terminate the pregnancy; if left untreated, this is a life-threatening condition.
That alone would make her disappearance concerning, but Marion’s lifestyle indicates foul play could have been involved in her case. She had a history of drug abuse, sex work and “residential instability”, and a violent relationship with her boyfriend. (He was in jail when she went missing, though, so he isn’t a suspect.)
It seems likely that Marion is deceased. If still alive, she would be 48 today.
The Charley Project Blog 