Missing, murdered relatives 'weigh heavily on our hearts,' Navajo Nation president says

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren issued an order in connection with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day to help tackle the issue.
The order puts a focus on coordination among tribal, federal and community agencies in handling such cases.
He reported 68 missing Diné people, 50 men, 14 women and four children.

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona — Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has inked an executive order aimed at tackling the issue of missing people on the reservation.

He timed the announcement with National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, Monday.

Ongoing work of advocates for missing members of the Native American community "deeply inspires us all," he said on social media. "Our relatives who go missing or are murdered continue to weigh heavily on our hearts."

As of late last month, Nygren reported 68 missing Diné people, including 50 men, 14 women and four children. Of those, 53 were missing from the reservation, and 15 were missing from off the reservation.

"We are going to make sure the Navajo Nation government continues to investigate, continues to meet with families and continues to follow up. This is what today means," Nygren said in another social media post.

Executive order 02-2025, according to Nygren, outlines efforts that Navajo Nation government entities are required to implement that emphasize "empathetic investigations and staff training."

The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people is a focus of Native American groups across the country, including Utah, and federal officials. Utah had formed a task force focused on investigating the issue in the state, but legislation creating the task force expired last year, and lawmakers didn't renew it during the 2025 session.

The Navajo Nation measure, inked by Nygren on Friday, calls for coordination among Navajo Nation law enforcement, public safety, health and family services officials and criminal prosecutors in addressing the issue. It also calls on Navajo Nation public safety and public health officials to coordinate with representatives from the federal government and other government entities. Navajo officials didn't immediately respond to a query seeking more details of the initiative.

"A key focus is on increasing coordination and cooperation among tribal agencies, federal partners and community groups. This unified effort is essential to streamline responses, improve communication and ensure justice and support for our families," Nygren said.

Improved coordination among federal, state, local and tribal officials has been a recurring point of emphasis in the many studies into the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The FBI last month launched an initiative, Operation Not Forgotten, that calls for temporary assignment in coming months of extra agents on a rotating basis to Salt Lake City and nine other cities to investigate the backlog of unresolved violent crimes involving Indigenous communities.

The now-defunct Utah task force issued a report in 2023 highlighting the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people in the state. While American Indian and Alaska Native people account for around 1.6% of Utah's population, they account for more than 5% of murder victims in the state, according to the report, a trend echoed on a national level.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.