Missing & Murdered Indigenous Task Force Releases Toolkit For Loved Ones

The Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & People (MMIWP) Task Force is releasing a toolkit for families and friends to use in the event someone they know goes missing.

The Task Force says the families and friends of missing people are often their best advocates for being found, and the MMIWP's Families Subcommittee spent over three years coordinating with the loved ones of missing or murdered people to develop the toolkit through listening sessions.

The toolkit is designed to give the families and friends of missing people awareness, prevention, and intervention strategies, as well as assistance for organizing relatives and friends during the chaos and stress when someone goes missing.

“Families, friends, and communities of those using the toolkit should know they are not alone,” says subcommittee chairwoman Carolyn DeFord. “This toolkit does not claim to have all the answers but what it does have is the experiences of our Families Subcommittee who have poured their stories and love into it. This toolkit comes from a shared responsibility to our mothers, sisters, Two-spirit siblings, girls, boys, men, and loved ones whose lives are valuable and deserve protection and justice.”

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Subcommittee co-chair Maureen Rosette added, “This toolkit is by community, for community. It is written with solidarity for our families, in remembrance of the lives lost but not forgotten, and resilience of our community.”

“Washington state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Task Force has been model for the nation,” Attorney General Nick Brown said. “This innovative and needed toolkit ensures that families know they are not alone. They will know how to find support when they need it most.”

The toolkit outlines the different steps that families and friends can take when someone they know goes missing, including strategies such as:

- Immediately contacting law enforcement

- Providing as much information as possible to law enforcement, including current photographs, and gathering case numbers to keep track of progress

- Not giving into feelings of guilt or frustration by finding support through groups like talking circles and tribal programs

- Using social media and other media organizations to circulate details

- Learning the strategies to manage a long-term disappearance

The Task Force says it will continue to update the toolkit as it receives more recommendations and information.

The toolkit also highlights the Washington State Patrol’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, which can assist both families and law enforcement with a search, including posters, website publishing, and help investigative management. More information about the Unit, click here.

Prior to publishing the toolkit, the Task Force helped to create the first-ever alert system for missing Indigenous people and a cold case unit that is the first such unit to focus solely on unsolved missing and murdered cases.

For more information about the Task Force, click here, and to see the toolkit - click here.