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Families, advocates gather for MMIP Day at Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
Five women draped shawls made from red cloth and blue fringes on five empty chairs placed in front of attendees at an event to recognize missing and murdered Indigenous people.
For Tiffany Jiron, executive director of Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, the shawl ceremony is “powerful” and is needed in spaces like the MMIP Day event held Monday in Albuquerque.
“We can always recognize and remember that we’re doing this for the people that we lost or that are still missing and be their voice,” Jiron said.
May 5 is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day in the United States. The day brings together families, community members, advocacy groups and government leaders to spotlight the ongoing crisis and to advocate for justice and healing.
In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham proclaimed the date as “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness Day,” according to the New Mexico Department of Indian Affairs.
The department held its annual MMIP Day at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.
An honor walk that circled the cultural center started the event.
Lynette Pino from Tesuque Pueblo was among those walking. On Pino’s T-shirt was a photo of her son, Darian Ray Nevayaktewa. He has been missing since June 19, 2008 and was last seen in Kykotsmovi, Arizona, on lands of the Hopi Tribe.
“Every day we think about him,” Pino said. “I get up in the morning. I have his picture there, and I pray, where are you? Hopefully, this will be the day that he’ll come home.”
Like many families with loved ones missing, Pino has been advocating law enforcement to continue looking into his disappearance.
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Nevayaktewa’s name is listed in national, Arizona and New Mexico missing persons databases.
Still, Pino said up to four investigators from federal law enforcement agencies in Arizona have overseen his case. Each time a new investigator is assigned, Pino must explain what happened to her son.
“Why do they leave and they get another investigator then start all over again?” she said. “It’s frustrating. It hurts.”
Her reasons for coming to MMIP Day were to support families facing similar circumstances and to share information about her son.
“Maybe they might know something,” Pino said about showing Nevayaktewa’s picture. “To get it across that we’re not the only ones. There’s other families missing their loved ones.”
Mixed in with posters that showed photos of missing relatives, other signs had the words, “no more,” in different Indigenous languages.
Albuquerque and Gallup have the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women cases in the state, according to the New Mexico Department of Justice.
As of April 2025, 186 Indigenous people were reported as missing in New Mexico. Indigenous men account for two-thirds of those reported missing.
Both are among the statistics shared by the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.
On July 1, the Turquoise Alert will start in New Mexico. This alert system is specially designed to notify the public when an Indigenous person goes missing in the state.
The bill to implement the alert was approved by state legislators and Lujan Grisham signed the bill in April. New Mexico is the fourth state in the nation to create the alert system.
