Washington State Creates First-Ever Missing Indigenous People Alert

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has signed into law a bill creating a first-in-the-nation statewide alert system for missing Indigenous people reports the Associated Press. The new alert system will place messages on highway reader boards and on the radio and social media, and provide information to the news media, in addition to notifying law enforcement of a missing Indigenous person. The legislation was paired with another bill that requires county coroners or medical examiners to take steps to identify and notify family members of murdered Indigenous people and return their remains, addressing the serious issue of murdered Indigenous women being mistakenly recorded as white or Hispanic by coroners’ offices, never being identified, or their remains never being repatriated.

That new law also establishes two grant funds for Indigenous survivors of human trafficking. Research conducted by the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle found that more than four times as many Indigenous women go missing than white women in Washington. Meanwhile, a 2021 summary of the existing research by the National Congress of American Indians reported that Native American women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall, even up to 10 times the national average in certain locations, and more than 80 percent have experienced violence.