FBI Director Kash Patel met with more than 200 tribal law enforcement partners in Albuquerque earlier this week.
His recent visit to the Southwest comes on the heels of the agency launching a tool to raise public awareness over a backlog of missing and murdered Indigenous cases.
The new initiative is called Voices Not Forgotten — a webpage featuring select unsolved crimes across Indian Country where the FBI is seeking the public’s help by offering minimum rewards of up to $25,000 for each advertised case.
Among those highlighted victims are two high-profile Arizona homicides: the deaths of 8-year-old Navajo girl Maleeka “Mollie” Boone and 14-year-old San Carlos Apache teen Emily Pike.
Both investigations are being handled by the FBI Phoenix Field Office. But as Deiandra Reid with the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women notes, this new tool isn’t exhaustive.
“You know, I looked at this website that they have and I didn’t see my sister on there,” said Reid, who is Diné and the MMIWR — or Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives — coordinator for the Albuquerque nonprofit.
Twenty-two years ago, Navajo teenager Tiffany Reid, 16, went missing while walking on her way to high school in Shiprock, New Mexico. Decades prior, a 9-year-old Navajo girl disappeared from nearby Gallup.
“Anthonette Cayedito is on there, and she’s [been] missing for about 40 years, so I don’t see what the difference is between her case and my sister’s case,” she added. “And a lot of times, our relatives fall through the cracks. The visibility is very important, but it’s not the finish line.”
When asked by KJZZ, the FBI National Press Office could not clarify who is responsible for determining which cases are featured on the new website — nor the criteria for adding them.
-
A professor at Northern Arizona University teamed up with Navajo communities to test water quality in remote wells. The map is meant to help tribal members still struggling with the effects of past uranium mining. -
Cataloging information from the Confluence may also be used to potentially deter future commercial development by industries like hydropower — while the Trump administration is eyeing energy projects on tribal lands. -
Lani Cupchoy wears many hats. She’s a public historian, an artist and a filmmaker as well as an assistant professor at Cal State University in Los Angeles. -
A judge ordered the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees for Navajo County Recorder David Marshall after tossing out a lawsuit challenging Marshall’s eligibility for office. -
The federal agency’s action — published Tuesday — contends that its decision is intended to “encourage energy production” in the midst of Trump’s self-declared national energy emergency.
