Arizona Spotlights Missing and Murdered Indigenous People While Demanding More Progress

Advocates, lawmakers, and community members are gathering Monday to mark National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness Day, drawing renewed attention to a crisis that remains difficult to fully quantify but impossible to ignore.

In Phoenix, supporters are assembling at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza for an evening community event running from 4 to 8 p.m. Representative Mae Peshlakai (D-AZ) is among those expected to speak, addressing the MMIP crisis and the work still needed to build what organizers described as a safe Arizona for future generations.

This has always been a prominent issue for Rep. Peshlakai, who has focused much of her legislative work on Indigenous communities. She leads the Arizona Legislature's Indigenous Peoples Caucus and has co-sponsored bills addressing tribal healthcare, education, voting access on tribal lands, and cultural recognition.

She is also a co-sponsor of HB 2281, the 2025 law that created Arizona's Turquoise Alert system for missing Indigenous persons.

Arizona's Fight

The state established its first study committee focused on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in 2019, later broadening that effort to encompass all missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Despite those advances, the full scope of the crisis in Arizona remains unclear. The most comprehensive Arizona-specific database, maintained by Arizona Luminaria, listed just under 100 verified MMIP cases as of early 2025, a figure advocates say significantly undercounts the actual toll.

A separate report from early 2026 counted nearly 1,100 open missing persons cases statewide, though that number covers all Arizonans, not Indigenous people specifically.

Historically, at least 160 Indigenous women and girls in Arizona were documented as murdered between 1976 and 2018.

Community Isn't Silenced

This fight has lit a fire under advocates who were already making their voices heard at the Capitol earlier in the day.

To add, Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) continued the momentum. "This is a human rights crisis, and silence is not an option," she wrote on X, adding that the push for justice would continue until every life is valued and protected.

The Arizona House Democrats echoed the call, pointing to the evening gathering and the ongoing legislative conversation around Indigenous safety.

Nationally, advocates say reliable data remains elusive due to longstanding gaps in how cases involving Native people are tracked and reported.