Missing & Murdered Indigenous People

A crisis of violence, disappearance, jurisdiction, fragmented data — and too little public attention.

WHAT IS THE MMIP CRISIS?

American Indian and Alaska Native people face disproportionately high rates of violence, murder, and disappearance. For Native women and girls, the danger can include domestic and sexual violence, exploitation and trafficking, abduction, homicide, or becoming missing after leaving home or an unsafe situation. There is no single pathway into the crisis — and no single solution.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO SOLVE?

• Many different circumstances. Cases can involve family or intimate-partner violence, trafficking, exploitation, abduction, homicide, or a person who leaves home or an unsafe situation and later becomes endangered.
• Jurisdiction can be complicated. Depending on where an incident occurs and who is involved, responsibility may involve Tribal, local, county, state, federal, or multiple law-enforcement agencies.
• The information is fragmented. There is still no complete national count of missing or murdered Indigenous people. Cases can be absent from databases, underreported, duplicated, or recorded differently by different agencies.
• Time matters. Uncertainty about reporting, jurisdiction, information sharing, or which agency is leading an investigation can make an already difficult case harder.
• Resources are uneven. Some communities and law-enforcement agencies lack sufficient investigators, victim services, forensic resources, training, technology, or personnel.
• The crisis has not received enough attention. Families, Tribal communities, and advocates have fought for years for greater visibility, better data, stronger investigations, and the same urgency afforded to other missing-person cases.

WHAT IS BEING DONE?

Important work is underway. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit investigates unresolved cases and works with Tribal, federal, state, and local partners. NamUs provides a national system for sharing and comparing missing-person and unidentified-person information across jurisdictional boundaries. Federal laws and initiatives have also focused on improving coordination, data collection, training, and investigative resources. These steps matter, but significant gaps remain.

WHY HIDES THE FIRE?

Hides the Fire is a fictional New Mexico thriller intended to bring this real crisis to people who might never watch a documentary or seek out information about MMIP. The story is not about portraying Indigenous people simply as victims. Indigenous characters lead the effort to understand what has happened, while Native and non-Native people work together toward a common purpose.

This crisis belongs to all of us. Addressing it requires all of us.

LEARN MORE

• Bureau of Indian Affairs — Missing & Murdered Unit
• BIA — Understanding the MMIP Crisis
• National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
• National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center