Washington State launches first-in-the-nation missing Indigenous people alert system

Story: 2022 C.E.  |  Last updated: April 28, 2026

Washington State made history when Governor Jay Inslee signed House Bill 1725 into law on March 31, 2022 C.E., creating the first statewide — and first-of-its-kind in the nation — alert system specifically for missing Indigenous people. Modeled on the existing Amber Alert framework, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s and People’s Alert System notifies law enforcement, highway billboards, social media platforms, and radio stations when a family member reports an Indigenous person missing. The bill was sponsored by State Representative Debra Lekanoff, a member of the Aleut and Tlingit tribes of Washington State.

At a glance

• Missing Indigenous alert: House Bill 1725 creates an Amber-Alert-style notification system that reaches police and public broadcasters when an Indigenous person is reported missing in Washington State.
• MMIW crisis: As of 2016 C.E., the National Crime Information Center had recorded more than 5,700 cases of missing Indigenous women in the U.S. — while the U.S. Department of Justice had reported only 116.
• Companion legislation: A second bill signed the same day requires county coroners and medical examiners to identify and notify the families of murdered Indigenous people, addressing a long-standing pattern of racial misidentification in death records.

Why this bill exists

The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is not new. Organizations like No More Stolen Sisters and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement have fought for years to bring visibility to a problem that rarely surfaces in mainstream media coverage.

The numbers make the scale of the problem hard to ignore. The Urban Indian Health Institute identified 506 unique cases of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls across 71 U.S. cities. Of those, 56% were murder cases and 25% were missing persons cases. Critically, 75% of victims had no tribal affiliation listed in the records — a gap that makes tracking and accountability nearly impossible.

Seattle has the highest number of murdered Indigenous people of any U.S. city, with 38 recorded murders. Tacoma leads the nation in missing Indigenous people, with 13 open cases. Washington State was not a bystander to this crisis — it was at its center.

The disappearance of Tulalip woman Mary Johnson-Davis in November 2020 C.E. directly spurred the writing of HB 1725. On October 31, 2025 C.E., human remains found in June of that year were confirmed to be hers. Her sisters, Gerry Davis and Nona Blouin, had spent years pushing for an investigation. They also highlighted how jurisdictional confusion on tribal land — and incorrect racial classification of their family, who are of both Native and French-Canadian descent — had complicated the handling of her case.

A system built around Indigenous women

While the alert system covers Indigenous men and children, its primary focus is Indigenous women. As Lekanoff put it during public testimony: “It’s not just an Indian issue, it’s not just an Indian responsibility. Our sisters, our aunties, our grandmothers are going missing every day — and it’s been going on for far too long.”

The bill reflects testimony that, as advocates have noted, the crisis “began as a women’s issue, and it remains primarily a women’s issue.”

Washington State already had a “Silver Alert” system for missing vulnerable adults. HB 1725 fills a gap that advocates had identified for years: no dedicated mechanism existed to trigger a coordinated public response when an Indigenous person went missing.

Racial misidentification: an ongoing challenge

One of the most persistent obstacles in addressing this crisis is inaccurate data. The Sovereign Bodies Institute, an Indigenous advocacy group, found that an estimated 62% of missing or murdered Indigenous women cases it identified were not listed in state or federal missing persons databases at all.

Washington State Patrol tribal liaison Patti Gosch noted in 2022 C.E. that most people on the initial Washington missing Indigenous persons list had been incorrectly entered under a different race. Abigail Echo-Hawk, Executive Vice President of the Seattle Indian Health Board, raised the same concern — law enforcement agencies were routinely entering inaccurate racial identity data, effectively erasing victims from the record.

The companion coroner bill addresses part of this problem by mandating accurate identification of Indigenous victims and notification of their families. For communities with specific cultural and religious ceremonies tied to death and burial, that notification is not just a bureaucratic step — it is a matter of dignity.

A signal to other states

Washington’s law is already part of a broader shift. Oregon, Wisconsin, and Arizona have all taken steps to increase visibility for missing and murdered Indigenous people. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of the Interior partnered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and launched a Missing and Murdered Unit in April 2021 C.E. under the Biden administration. The unit assembled seven teams of criminal investigators, tribal law enforcement officers, and Department of Justice staff to reopen cold cases involving missing Indigenous people.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also expanded its tribal justice resources in recent years, and advocates are pushing for a national-level alert system modeled on what Washington State has built.

Still, structural challenges remain. Jurisdictional gaps between tribal, state, and federal law enforcement continue to slow investigations on and near tribal land. Data quality across agencies remains inconsistent. And for families who have already lost someone, no alert system arrives in time. The work ahead is as significant as the milestone itself.

What Washington State has done is establish that these cases matter enough to warrant a dedicated public infrastructure — and that Indigenous communities deserve the same coordinated response that has long existed for others. That is a foundation other states can now build on.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s and People’s Alert System

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Indigenous land rights gain global recognition at COP30
• Marie-Louise Eta becomes the first female head coach in men’s top-flight European football
• The Good News for Humankind archive on Indigenous rights

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