Grassroots organizations work to fill gap in MMIP data

Wanting to be part of the solution, Thompson, an enrolled citizen of the Forest County Potawatomi Nation, created her own MMIP database for Waking Women to track local cases. The data guides where and how they offer services and is also occasionally shared with law enforcement to assist in investigations.

Thompson began by analyzing the data collected by the government. She quickly found that police departments, the Department of Justice and the FBI keep separate records of missing persons, each with their own process of data collection and storage.

The gaps in the data are significant. For example, in 2024, the FBI entered 10,248 Native Americans in its missing persons database, the National Crime Information Center. Yet a recent search of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database, maintained by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice, yielded only 56 records of missing Indigenous people for that same year.

The National Child Search Assistance Act requires all missing children to be recorded in the FBI’s database. “While law enforcement agencies are required to enter records into the NCIC Missing Person File for missing individuals under the age of 21, there is not a similar requirement for other adults who go missing,” the FBI explained in a statement. “Records in the Missing Person File are retained indefinitely, until the individual is located, or the record is canceled by the entering agency.”

Christine Dobday, a spokesperson for the DOJ, told Buffalo’s Fire that the DOJ’s missing persons database (NamUS) only reflects active cases. Once cases are solved, they are removed from the public view.

“The statistics and case information in NamUs are dynamic and continuously updated as new cases are entered and existing ones are resolved or archived,” Dobday said.

People not datapoints

Thompson, who is also a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Task Force on Research on Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women, believes both numbers are undercounts.

She said gaps in government data also arise from systemic issues in how the data is gathered and the lack of collaboration among tribal, state and federal law enforcement. When someone goes missing, police report the missing person’s race. In Thompson’s experience, Indigenous people are often misclassified. In addition, tribal affiliation is rarely reported, a key detail that could help trace the person to their community.

And numbers capture only part of the story.

“The Western approach is to have a data checklist. But when relatives start talking, you get much more than what’s in a checklist,” Thompson said. “Our database is going to reflect those differences and allow for their stories, lineage, family — all those things that wouldn’t be in a criminal or missing persons database.”

Thompson interviews family members to gather qualitative data. She then uses the data to track patterns and put together a more accurate representation of MMIP in Wisconsin. She reports patterns to law enforcement — such as if a number of people go missing at the same time or if people with certain characteristics go missing, such as women of a specific age range —- to help with investigations.

Beyond patterns,Thompson said her data tells a story of the survivor or relative, honoring them as a person not just a datapoint.

Hitting roadblocks

Emily Grant, a researcher at the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, previously did work for the state collecting data on human trafficking. This led Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon in 2019 to ask her to help launch an MMIP task force.

The first order of business, Grant said, was understanding the scope of the problem. She began reaching out to law enforcement agencies to track records of MMIP numbers but hit too many roadblocks.

“Every law enforcement agency has a different record,” Grant said.

Eventually, Grant began using vital statistics records to collect data on MMIP. The records are used in every state to track all births and deaths.

The numbers become especially difficult to track when the missing Indigenous people are adults. Grant said there is a federal requirement in Wyoming for how missing children are reported, but not adults.

“It’s up to the law enforcement officer taking the report to determine if it is a suspicious circumstance, if they think the missing person will turn up and if they think there is a reason to put it in the database,” Grant said.

This leaves room for assumptions, biases and rocks left unturned, she said. A new law that went into effect in July aims to address the gap by creating more specific guidelines to follow when adults go missing.

Capacity challenges

Another hurdle to collecting accurate MMIP numbers is law enforcement data capacity.

Data is the last thing underfunded police agencies in tribal communities or small, rural towns are concerned with, Grant said: “They are so overworked in trying to respond to calls that it really affects the data-gathering capacity.”

But possibly the biggest issue fueling the gap, according to both Grant and Thompson, is a lack of communication between agencies.

“Agencies can be doing a lot to fill the holes and be great in their system, but if the larger state system or national system don’t have fields for that information, then we don’t see the data at a state or national level,” Grant said.

By committing more time, sensitivity and resources to data collection, Grant put together more concrete numbers. In her first report, completed in 2021, she found Indigenous people made up 3% of the population in Wyoming but 20% of the homicides. There are still gaps in these numbers, Grant said, so the number is likely even higher.

Grant updates her data on an annual basis.

“I’m hoping we can continue to improve the data so that we don’t have to always say that this is an undercount,” Grant said.

Tailored solutions

Thompson believes that people most affected must be the ones driving change.

It starts, she said, with agencies following recommendations outlined in the Not One More Report, which recommends that data be shared widely and be easily accessible to tribal police and the community. Tribes should also craft their own response plans for what to do when a citizen is missing, and how to track it, Thompson said. A specific response tailored to each tribe will help with data consistency.

“We need to have data sovereignty,” Thompson said. “If the goal is to end violence against people, then we need to center those people. That is the way we need to form our data and that will form our actions.”