Free Video-Based Mini-Course for Engineering/Technology/Energy Curriculum, Ready with Materials, Learning Objectives, Assessments

Mini-Course Overview:  Fast-Tracking Electricity Generation: Hydrogen, Natural Gas & More 

Ademola Fagade, CEO of Geoprime Energy, discusses the urgent global energy crisis, characterized by aging infrastructure, operational inefficiencies, and slow clean energy adoption in both developed and underdeveloped nations. Drawing on his background and extensive experience with companies like DTE, Fagade presents Geoprime's multi-fuel and modular approach to deliver advanced, reliable clean energy. A core innovation is their Synafox software, a "living digital twin" that uses a proprietary large language model (Synagogen) and AI-enhanced control boxes to aggregate data, predict failures, and optimize operations across the energy asset lifecycle, addressing communication silos and safety concerns. Geoprime is "very bullish on" ammonia as a safer and scalable hydrogen carrier, and their technology can convert carbon-based waste into hydrogen and valuable byproducts like carbon black and graphene. The company is actively pursuing projects for data centers, biotech facilities, and underserved communities, emphasizing collaboration with major utility companies to collectively "leapfrog" existing energy paradigms.

(This mini-course is perfect for courses in engineering, entrepreneurship, technology, technology strategy, and economic development)

Link to video: https://youtu.be/_fitd4_ss7A

Course Objective Evaluate Geoprime Energy's comprehensive strategy for addressing the global energy crisis, critically assessing how their integrated approach—combining innovative technologies like Synafox software and ammonia as a hydrogen carrier with scalable, modular energy systems and collaborative partnerships—aims to overcome challenges in both aging infrastructure and underserved energy markets.

Learning Objectives Incorporating Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs

1. Recall Ademola Fagade's early influences and educational background that shaped his career in the energy sector [Remembering].

2. Describe the key challenges contributing to the looming energy crisis as identified by Ademola Fagade, including issues in both developed and underdeveloped countries [Understanding].

3. Explain how Geoprime Energy's Synafox software addresses operational inefficiencies and safety concerns in energy asset management through its digital twin and AI capabilities [Understanding].

4. Differentiate between various types of hydrogen production (green, blue, turquoise, gold) and their respective challenges and cost implications [Analyzing].

5. Summarize the innovative role of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier within Geoprime Energy's solutions, highlighting its advantages over direct hydrogen storage [Understanding].

6. Apply the concept of modular and multi-fuel energy systems to diverse energy demands, such as manufacturing plants versus data centers, using examples from Geoprime's product line [Applying].

7. Evaluate the strategic importance of Geoprime Energy's collaborative approach and diverse partnerships in tackling the global energy crisis [Evaluating].

8. Propose how Geoprime Energy's technology could be adapted to address specific energy challenges in different geographical or economic contexts, such as areas with stranded gas assets [Creating].

20 Multiple Choice Questions (Lower-Level Bloom's Taxonomy)

For answer key, please contact E-Learning Corgi

1. What was Ademola Fagade's family primarily involved in before he pursued electrical engineering? a) Textile trade b) Civil engineering and construction c) Agriculture d) Banking

2. Ademola Fagade's grandmother was a pioneer in which industry in Lagos? a) Banking b) Civil engineering c) Textile trade d) Electrical engineering

3. What was Ademola's initial career interest as a child, leading to him building mini boats? a) Civil engineering b) Pre-med c) Electrical works/engineering d) Textile manufacturing

4. Which US energy company did Ademola Fagade first join, where he "department hopped" to learn various aspects of the industry? a) Consumers Energy b) Pratt Whitney c) DTE d) PG&E

5. Ademola's first contract for Geoprime Energy involved the decommissioning of what type of power plant? a) Natural gas power plant b) Nuclear power plant c) Hydroelectric power plant d) Coal power plant

6. According to Ademola, replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas-fired plants is considered what kind of option? a) Worse b) Neutral c) Significantly better d) More expensive

7. What organization in Michigan, tagged as an "opportunity zone," advised Ademola to conduct customer discovery for his company? a) University of Michigan b) Wayne State c) Techtown d) New Lab

8. How many energy executives did Ademola interview and consult across the US as part of his customer discovery? a) 50 b) 75 c) 100 d) 135

9. What is the primary purpose of Geoprime Energy's Synafox software? a) To manage human resources in energy companies b) To create an umbrella operating system for energy asset lifecycle management c) To design new power plants d) To forecast energy prices

10. Ademola compares the current energy industry's process for commissioning/decommissioning plants to a "wheel" where different contractors work in what manner? a) Collaboratively b) Siloed c) Synchronized d) Integrated

11. Which country is cited as an example of "leapfrogging" in development compared to Nigeria, despite receiving aid from Nigeria in the past? a) Japan b) South Korea c) United States d) Germany

12. What percentage of global energy investment is concentrated on clean energy, as mentioned by Ademola? a) Less than 2% b) 15% c) 50% d) 80%

13. What is a key limitation of solar energy for powering an entire city, as discussed in the recording? a) It's too expensive b) It only works during the day and requires battery storage c) It takes up too much land d) It's not clean energy

14. What substance is Geoprime Energy "very bullish on" as a hydrogen carrier? a) Methane b) Carbon black c) Ammonia d) Oxygen

15. Green hydrogen is produced through which process? a) Steam methane reforming b) Plasma torch separation c) Electrolysis d) Microbe conversion

16. What is the approximate cost per gallon for gold hydrogen, which uses microbes in depleted oil wells? a) $4.60 b) $0.13 c) $0.50 d) $1.00

17. What valuable byproduct, used for high-tech applications, can be obtained when turning carbon-based materials into hydrogen using Geoprime's anaerobic system? a) Aluminum b) Silicon c) Carbon black/Graphene d) Ash

18. What is the power range for Geoprime Energy's HG01 (Hybrid Grid) electrification system? a) 0.5 to 1 MW b) 1.2 to 10 MW c) 10 to 50 MW d) 100 MW and above

19. What is a "data grid" in Geoprime Energy's product line primarily designed for? a) Small residential homes b) Manufacturing plants c) Data centers d) Rural electric co-ops

20. What is a core component of Synafox that learns operations and aggregates data from various sources to find optimal paths for efficiency? a) PI tags b) Manual oversight c) Large language model (Synagogen) d) Network switches

5 Short-Answer Questions (Higher-Level Bloom's Taxonomy)

1. Analyze the multi-faceted nature of the "energy crisis" as described by Ademola Fagade, distinguishing between challenges faced by underdeveloped countries and those faced by developed nations like the US.

2. Evaluate the advantages of Geoprime Energy's strategy of using ammonia as a hydrogen carrier compared to directly handling pure hydrogen, considering safety, storage, and economic factors mentioned in the recording.

3. Propose a scenario where Geoprime Energy's modular HG01 or SG01 systems could be most effectively deployed in a specific community or industrial setting, justifying your choice with details from the transcript regarding the system's capabilities and benefits.

4. Justify why Ademola Fagade views the collaboration with large utility companies as essential, rather than acting solely as a competitor, in addressing the energy crisis, referencing specific points he made about his relationship with DTE.

5. Create an argument for how Synafox's "living digital twin" and AI-enhanced control box could have prevented the primary service transformer accident at DTE described by Ademola, focusing on how its features address the root causes of that incident.

Course developed by Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

For additional materials (video summaries, additional reading, answer keys, and more, please contact E-Learning Corgi)

When Your Mind Plays Tricks: What Standing Rock Taught Us About Media Psychology

How cognitive science explains why complex Indigenous issues often get lost in translation

 Picture this: You're scrolling through your news feed in late 2016, and you see a headline about "pipeline protests" in North Dakota. Your brain instantly starts filing this information into familiar categories—environmental activists versus big oil, protesters versus police, David versus Goliath. It happens so fast you don't even realize you're doing it.

But what if I told you that this instant categorization—this mental filing system we all use—actually made you miss the real story? The 2016-2017 events at Standing Rock offer a fascinating case study in how our own psychology can be used against us, creating blind spots that make complex stories disappear in plain sight.

Image source:  Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests 

This isn't about pointing fingers or assigning blame. It's about understanding something much more interesting: how the human mind works, and how that knowledge can help us become smarter consumers of information. Whether you're Native or non-Native, understanding these psychological tricks can change how you see media coverage of any complex issue.

The Mental Shortcut That Changed Everything

Back in the 1970s, two psychologists named Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman made a discovery that would eventually win them a Nobel Prize. They found that human brains don't process new information like neutral computers. Instead, we use mental shortcuts called "heuristics"—and one of the most powerful is something they called the "representativeness heuristic."

Here's how it works in real life: When your brain encounters the phrase "pipeline protest," it immediately starts pattern-matching. It searches through your memory for similar situations, then uses those patterns to understand what's happening. For most Americans, those patterns came from previous environmental movements—Earth Day rallies, tree-sitters opposing logging, Greenpeace activists chaining themselves to whaling ships.

So when Standing Rock hit the news, millions of brains automatically slotted it into the "environmental protest" category. Everything that followed got filtered through that lens. The water cannons and police dogs? Classic protest suppression. The camps and civil disobedience? Typical activist tactics. The corporate pipeline versus indigenous communities? David and Goliath environmental story.

The problem is, this mental filing system missed something huge. Standing Rock wasn't primarily an environmental protest—it was one of the largest assertions of Indigenous sovereignty in modern American history.

What Really Happened (And Why You Probably Missed It)

Let me paint you a different picture of Standing Rock, one that probably didn't make it through your mental filters the first time around.

In April 2016, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a historian and member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, established the Sacred Stone Camp on her own land. LaDonna wasn't some outside environmental activist who showed up with a protest sign. She was a grandmother protecting the burial sites of her ancestors and asserting her tribe's treaty rights—legal agreements signed with the United States government in 1851 and 1868 that guaranteed her people's authority over their territory.

When tribal teenagers like Jasilyn Charger started running from Standing Rock to Washington, D.C., they weren't doing a youth climate march. They were citizens of a sovereign nation appealing to the federal government to honor its legal obligations. These young people could speak with sophisticated knowledge about federal Indian law, tribal jurisdiction, and the government-to-government relationship between their nation and the United States.

By December 2016, representatives from over 300 tribal nations had joined the camps. Think about that for a moment—300 sovereign nations coming together in solidarity. This wasn't a protest movement; it was the largest gathering of Indigenous governments in over a century, asserting their collective authority to protect sacred water and treaty-guaranteed territory.

Image source - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests 

But here's the kicker: the pipeline was originally supposed to cross the Missouri River near Bismarck, North Dakota's capital. When officials worried that a spill might contaminate the city's drinking water, they quietly rerouted it through tribal territory instead. This detail—which reveals the entire story was really about whose lives matter and whose don't—appeared in fewer than 30% of mainstream news stories.

When Your Brain Doubles Down on Being Wrong

Once people had filed Standing Rock under "environmental protest," another psychological mechanism kicked in to lock that interpretation in place: confirmation bias. This is your brain's tendency to pay attention to information that confirms what you already believe while ignoring information that challenges it.

Media outlets quickly discovered which aspects of Standing Rock got the most clicks and shares. Stories about environmental risks and pipeline debates? Huge engagement. Dramatic confrontations with law enforcement? People couldn't stop watching. Climate change discussions? Perfect for existing environmental audiences.

Meanwhile, stories about treaty law, tribal governmental authority, and sovereignty issues got much less attention. Partly this happened because these topics didn't match what audiences expected to see, and partly because understanding them required background knowledge that most reporters and readers simply didn't have.

Social media algorithms made this even worse. If you engaged with environmental content about Standing Rock, the platforms showed you more environmental content. If you shared posts about police confrontations, you got more confrontation videos. The algorithm essentially created personalized echo chambers that reinforced whatever angle you'd initially focused on.

The Information That Disappeared

When researchers later analyzed Standing Rock coverage, they found some stunning gaps between what actually happened and what the public learned about it.

Less than a quarter of major news reports mentioned treaty rights or tribal sovereignty in any meaningful way. The government-to-government relationship between tribes and federal authorities—which is the actual legal framework that governs these situations—was rarely explained. Most Americans still don't understand that tribal nations aren't ethnic groups or cultural organizations, but actual governments with specific legal relationships to the United States.

The cultural and spiritual dimensions got similarly scrambled. When Lakota spiritual leaders conducted traditional ceremonies at the camps, when they shared teachings about Indigenous peoples' responsibilities to protect the water, mainstream media consistently described these actions as "protest tactics" or "demonstrations." Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, carries spiritual authority that spans multiple tribal nations and represents centuries of sacred tradition. But coverage described him as a "protest supporter" rather than recognizing the governmental and spiritual authority he represented.

Even the language choices revealed the psychological sorting at work. Over 400 Indigenous people were arrested during Standing Rock, but mainstream media consistently used phrases like "protesters arrested" rather than "tribal citizens detained" or "sovereign nation members imprisoned." These aren't just word games—language choices like these shape how audiences understand who has legitimate authority and who's breaking the law.

Why This Matters for Everyone

You might be thinking, "Okay, this is interesting psychology, but why should I care?" Here's why: the same mental mechanisms that distorted Standing Rock coverage are working on you every single day, with every news story you encounter.

When you see coverage of immigration issues, your brain is using mental shortcuts to categorize what you're seeing. When you read about economic policy, healthcare debates, or international conflicts, the representativeness heuristic is instantly filing these stories into familiar patterns. And confirmation bias is making sure you pay attention to information that confirms your existing views while filtering out information that might challenge them.

Understanding these psychological processes doesn't eliminate them—they actually serve important functions in helping us process huge amounts of information quickly. But knowing how they work can make you a much more sophisticated consumer of news and information.

Becoming a Smarter Information Consumer

So how do you work with your own psychology instead of being manipulated by it? The first step is simply recognizing when your brain is doing its automatic categorization thing. When you encounter a complex news story, pause for a moment and ask yourself: "What mental template am I using to understand this? What familiar pattern is my brain comparing this to?"

Next, actively seek out sources that might use different frameworks. For Indigenous issues, that might mean reading tribal newspapers, following Indigenous journalists on social media, or looking for coverage that quotes tribal officials rather than outside activists. For any complex story, it means recognizing that your first source probably isn't giving you the complete picture.

Pay attention to language choices, both in media coverage and in your own thinking. When you see words like "protesters," "activists," or "demonstrations," ask whether those terms accurately describe what's actually happening. Sometimes they do; sometimes they're obscuring more complex realities.

Most importantly, get comfortable with complexity. The human brain loves simple stories with clear good guys and bad guys, but real life is usually messier than that. Standing Rock involved environmental protection and tribal sovereignty and treaty law and cultural preservation and economic considerations all at the same time. Learning to hold multiple dimensions of a story in your mind simultaneously is like mental weightlifting—it gets easier with practice.

What This Means for Indigenous Communities

For Indigenous communities, understanding these psychological mechanisms offers both challenges and opportunities. The challenge is that sovereignty and treaty rights are complex legal concepts that don't fit neatly into the mental templates most Americans carry around. Environmental activism and protest movements are much more familiar, which is why those frames often get applied even when they don't really fit.

The opportunity lies in becoming strategically sophisticated about working with and around these psychological shortcuts. This doesn't mean accepting misleading frameworks, but it does mean understanding them well enough to counter them effectively. When speaking to mainstream audiences, Indigenous leaders and advocates can explicitly address the mental templates people are likely using. Instead of assuming people understand sovereignty, they can start conversations by establishing the legal and governmental context before audiences have a chance to file the information under "protest" or "activism."

Building Indigenous-controlled media systems becomes crucial in this context. When you control your own information platforms, you can establish accurate frameworks from the beginning rather than having to argue against misleading ones after they've already taken hold in people's minds.

The Bigger Picture

The psychological analysis of Standing Rock coverage reveals something important about how democracy works—or doesn't work—in an information-rich society. When complex political realities get filtered through oversimplified mental templates, citizens can't make informed decisions because they're literally not seeing what's actually happening.

This isn't just about Indigenous issues, though Standing Rock provides a particularly clear example. Any time marginalized communities, complex legal disputes, or unfamiliar cultural practices make the news, similar psychological processes are at work. Understanding these mechanisms can help us recognize when our own mental shortcuts might be limiting our understanding.

The goal isn't to eliminate mental shortcuts entirely—that would be impossible and counterproductive. Instead, it's about developing awareness of when these shortcuts might be inadequate and building systems that provide more complete information when complexity warrants it.

Looking Forward

The next time you encounter news coverage of a complex issue, especially one involving communities or legal frameworks you're not familiar with, try this experiment: Read the coverage with fresh eyes and ask yourself what mental template you're using to understand the story. Then go looking for sources that might use different frameworks. See what aspects of the story become visible when you change your analytical lens.

For both Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers, this kind of cognitive awareness offers practical benefits. In an era when we're all drowning in information, developing these critical thinking skills becomes essential for effective citizenship and advocacy. Understanding that your own psychology can be manipulated—and learning to recognize when it's happening—is one of the most powerful tools you can develop.

The water protectors at Standing Rock understood they were doing multiple types of work simultaneously: protecting the environment, asserting sovereignty, enforcing treaty rights, preserving culture, and fulfilling spiritual responsibilities. Media systems capable of reflecting this kind of complexity serve everyone better than those that reduce everything to familiar but inadequate sound bites.

Your mind is more powerful than you think, but it's also more vulnerable to manipulation than most people realize. Understanding how it works is the first step toward using that power more effectively—and making sure others can't use your own psychology against you.

The Psychology of Invisibility: Why Some Missing Women Make Headlines While Others Don't

Here's a disturbing statistic that might surprise you: Indigenous women are murdered at rates 10 times higher than the national average. Yet when you think about missing women cases you've heard about in the news, how many involved Indigenous women?

If you're struggling to remember many—or any—you're not alone. While 51% of white female homicide victims receive newspaper coverage, only 18% of Indigenous women do. This isn't just bad journalism or media bias, though those play a role. Something deeper is happening here, rooted in how our brains actually process and remember information. And once you understand it, you'll never see missing persons coverage the same way again.

Your Brain's Memory Trick

Think about this for a second: when you try to assess how common something is, what does your brain do? It searches through your memory for examples. The easier it is to remember instances of something happening, the more common and important your brain assumes it must be. Can't think of many examples? Your brain concludes it's probably rare and not worth worrying about.

Psychologists call this the "availability heuristic," and it's actually pretty useful most of the time. If you can easily remember several news stories about car accidents on a particular highway, you'll probably drive more carefully on that route. Makes sense, right?

But here's where it gets problematic: what happens when the media consistently covers some types of stories more than others? Your brain starts making judgments based on incomplete information. You're not getting the full picture—you're getting a filtered version that makes some problems seem huge and others nearly invisible.

This is exactly what's happening with missing persons cases. When some disappearances get wall-to-wall coverage while others barely make local news, your brain develops a skewed sense of whose disappearances "typically" generate concern and resources.

Two Women, Two Completely Different Stories

Let me tell you about two young women whose cases perfectly illustrate how this psychological trick plays out in real life.

In September 2021, Gabby Petito went missing during a cross-country road trip with her fiancé. She was 22, white, and had been documenting their travels on Instagram. Within days, her story was everywhere. CNN, Fox News, social media feeds—you couldn't escape it. Her face was on every major network night after night. Even after her body was found, the coverage continued for months. Documentaries were made. Podcasts dissected every detail. Her name became as recognizable as any celebrity's.

Now let me tell you about Ashley Loring HeavyRunner. She was 20, a Blackfoot woman from Montana, and a mother of two young children. She disappeared from her family's ranch four years before Gabby's case, in June 2017. Ashley was working toward her future, contributing to her community, and beloved by her family.

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner

Here's the stark difference: in the first five year after Ashley's disappearance, her case generated fewer than 40 news stories total. Most appeared only in local Montana papers. No major network picked up her story. No viral hashtags. No documentaries. Her sister continues to make people aware, but it is difficult (https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/ashley-loring).

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner

Both women deserved every possible effort to find them. Both families deserved support, answers, and resources. So why the dramatic difference in coverage?

The Unconscious Checklist in Our Heads

The answer lies in how our brains process stories about victims. Whether we realize it or not, we all carry around unconscious mental checklists for what makes a "compelling" victim. These templates have been shaped by decades of media coverage, and they create predictable patterns in what captures our attention.

The "Perfect Victim" Template: Our brains have learned to expect missing persons stories to involve young, white, middle-class women doing "normal" things—going to college, traveling with boyfriends, living what seems like a familiar life. Cases that don't match this template don't trigger the same psychological response that makes stories stick in memory.

The "Fair World" Filter: Here's something uncomfortable to consider: most of us desperately want to believe the world is basically fair. We want to think bad things happen to people who somehow invite trouble or make risky choices. Stories about Indigenous women often reveal uncomfortable truths about random violence, system failures, and historical injustices that make some people more vulnerable through no fault of their own. Our brains sometimes protect us from this discomfort by simply not retaining these stories as well.

The Attribution Game: When we do hear about violence against Indigenous women, there's a tendency to focus on individual circumstances rather than seeing bigger patterns. Instead of recognizing systemic issues like jurisdictional problems or inadequate law enforcement resources, we might unconsciously attribute the violence to personal choices or cultural factors. This makes the stories feel less urgent and less memorable.

The "People Like Me" Factor: Let's be honest—we pay more attention to stories about people who remind us of ourselves or our loved ones. When victims seem different in gender, race, culture, class, or geography, our brains automatically allocate less attention. It's not necessarily conscious prejudice, but it's a psychological reality that systematically favors some stories over others. If the majority of the individuals reading the news or finding out via social media are of a different demographic group, it's harder for them to pay attention.

The Vicious Cycle That Keeps Cases Invisible

Here's where it gets really insidious. These psychological patterns create a self-perpetuating cycle that's hard to break:

Indigenous women's cases don't get prominent coverage → They don't stick in public memory → People don't think violence against Indigenous women is a big problem → Media outlets don't prioritize these stories → Law enforcement feels less public pressure → Investigations get fewer resources → Cases are less likely to be solved → There are fewer "success stories" to report → Even less coverage happens.

Round and round it goes.

This isn't just about hurt feelings or media representation. This cycle has real, devastating consequences. Public attention drives political pressure. Political pressure influences how resources get allocated. Cases that remain invisible to the public don't generate the sustained outcry needed to improve law enforcement response, fix legal gaps, or fund prevention programs.

Think about it: when was the last time you saw a congressional hearing about a missing Indigenous woman? When did you last see protestors demanding answers about unsolved cases? The psychological invisibility directly translates into less political action and fewer resources.

When Cases Do Get Attention: Real Change Happens

But here's the thing—when Indigenous women's cases do receive adequate attention, amazing things can happen. Let me tell you about two women whose stories broke through the cycle and created lasting change.

Hanna Harris was a 21-year-old Northern Cheyenne college student who disappeared in Montana in 2013. Her family refused to let her case fade into obscurity. Their relentless advocacy and the attention they managed to generate led to May 5th being designated as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls. Hanna's story became a catalyst that opened national conversations about this crisis.

Family at Hanna Harris' grave near Lame Deer on the Cheyenne Reservation

Then there's Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old Spirit Lake tribal member who was eight months pregnant when she was murdered in North Dakota in 2017. Her case generated enough attention to expose massive coordination problems between different law enforcement agencies. The result? "Savanna's Act," a federal law that improved how agencies work together on missing persons cases involving Indigenous people.

Savannah LaFontaine-Greywind

These stories prove something crucial: when individual cases do receive the attention they deserve, they can expose systemic problems and drive real policy changes. The challenge is making sure more cases get that attention in the first place.

The Legal Maze That Makes Things Worse

There's another layer to this problem that makes Indigenous women's cases particularly vulnerable to being forgotten: the legal system is genuinely complicated when it comes to crimes on tribal lands.

Picture this scenario: a woman goes missing on a reservation. Who investigates—tribal police, county sheriff, state authorities, or the FBI? The answer depends on a complex web of factors including where exactly the crime occurred, whether the victim and perpetrator are tribal members, and what specific laws were broken. Sometimes agencies assume someone else is handling the case. Sometimes crucial evidence gets lost in the handoff between jurisdictions.

Here's a statistic that might shock you: until 2013, tribal courts couldn't even prosecute non-Native men for domestic violence against Native women. Even now, their jurisdiction is limited to specific crimes. Since most violence against Indigenous women is committed by non-Native perpetrators, many cases still fall through legal cracks.

These systemic issues would be front-page news if people understood them better. But because individual Indigenous women's cases don't get sustained coverage, the public never learns about these broader problems that need fixing. It's another way the psychological invisibility creates real-world consequences.

Fighting Back: How to Make Stories Stick

Once you understand how these psychological mechanisms work, you can start to see how to work with them rather than against them. The goal isn't to fight human psychology—it's to get strategic about it.

Tell Stories Multiple Times, Multiple Ways: Instead of relying on a single news report that quickly fades from memory, advocates are learning to create sustained coverage. Anniversary stories, connecting individual cases to broader patterns, using multimedia approaches that engage multiple senses—all of these help build the kind of lasting memory that drives action.

Show the Full Person: The availability heuristic gets stronger when stories have compelling visual elements. Missing persons cases need rich storytelling that shows victims as complete human beings with dreams, talents, and relationships—not just crime scene photos or missing person posters. Social media campaigns that share women's artwork, videos, and everyday moments create the emotional connections that make stories unforgettable.

Build Bridges to Familiar Concerns: Smart advocates are learning to connect Indigenous women's stories to issues that already concern mainstream audiences—domestic violence, rural crime, federal law enforcement problems. This isn't about hiding the unique aspects of these cases; it's about giving people familiar entry points that can lead to deeper understanding.

Control Your Own Story: Indigenous communities are increasingly building their own media platforms—newspapers, podcasts, social media accounts, documentary projects. When you control your own storytelling, you can provide the sustained, contextual coverage that builds lasting memories without depending on mainstream outlets that might not understand your perspective.

Connect Individual Stories to Big Solutions: The most effective advocates understand that memorable individual cases need to be explicitly connected to policy solutions. When people remember a specific woman's story, they're more likely to support legislation or funding that could prevent similar tragedies.

What You Can Do Right Now

Here's the bottom line: the psychological mechanisms that make some missing persons cases forgettable while others become national obsessions aren't set in stone. They're patterns we can understand and strategically address.

You don't have to be an advocate or journalist to make a difference. Every time you share a story about a missing Indigenous woman on social media, you're fighting against the availability heuristic. Every time you ask "whatever happened to that case?" months later, you're creating the sustained attention these stories need. Every time you contact your representatives about funding for tribal law enforcement or support for victims' families, you're translating psychological attention into political action. Share news about support for indigenous crime victims (see the story of Oklahoma's Ida Beard: https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/missing/oklahoma-tribal-citizens-disappearance-leads-to-law-in-support-of-indigenous-crime-victims).

The goal isn't to reduce attention to any victim—every missing person deserves maximum effort to bring them home safely. But we can work toward a world where psychological and systemic barriers don't prevent some families from getting the support that every family deserves when their loved ones disappear.

Next time you see a missing persons case in the news, ask yourself: Will I remember this story in a month? What would make it stick in my memory? And if it's already starting to fade, what can I do to keep it alive?

Because somewhere, a family is desperately hoping that their missing daughter, sister, mother, or aunt won't become just another statistic that disappears from public consciousness. Understanding the psychology of attention is the first step toward making sure that doesn't happen.