ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Indigenous people are gathering across the country to honor loved ones who are missing or have been killed and to call for better data collection, law enforcement response and reforms to make their communities safer. Hundreds of marches, rallies, talking circles, self-defense classes and candlelight vigils are planned for the week of May 5 at U.S. state capitols, tribal community spaces and major city streets.

The week of May 5 is observed as a national day of awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples movement. Many events call for participants to wear red to honor Indigenous victims of violence in the United States and Canada.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Native Americans and Alaska Natives are more than twice as likely as the general population to be victims of a violent crime, and Native women are twice as likely to be victims of homicide. At the end of 2025, the FBI's National Crime Information Center recorded just under 1,500 active federal cases involving missing Native Americans.

"Don't look at the numbers and feel sorry for us. Look at the numbers and say, 'How do we ensure that this doesn't continue?'" said Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute.

In 2020, President Donald Trump signed Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act into law to address violent crime in Indian Country by improving data collection and law enforcement reforms. Implementation of both laws has been inconsistent and delayed. In 2022, a federal commission to study the crisis convened two years behind schedule, and its recommendations, which ranged from expanding authority for tribal law enforcement to improving communication with victims' families, were made public in 2023.

The Department of Justice continued Operation Not Forgotten by deploying dozens of FBI agents, analysts and other personnel on a rotating, temporary basis to field offices near tribal lands. Since 2023, those assignments have yielded more than 200 arrests and convictions in homicide, domestic abuse and sexual assault cases, according to the FBI.

"More manpower from the FBI on reservations, that's not a good solution in my mind," said Michael Henderson, director of public safety for the Navajo Nation. Henderson said federal funds could be better spent staffing and funding tribal police departments.

At a prayer walk in Colorado Springs, marchers chanted "No more stolen lives on stolen land" and carried signs with photos and stories of dozens of Indigenous people killed or disappeared. Among the marchers was Denise Porambo, whose daughter, Destiny Jeriann Whiteman, was killed in August 2025 on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation in southwest Colorado. Whiteman was 24 and had an infant son when she was killed. "It hurts every day," Porambo said after the march.

In Montana, the family of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places organizes marches, vigils and courthouse demonstrations to raise awareness about her case and to pressure law enforcement for action and answers. Stops Pretty Places disappeared from her home on the Crow Reservation in August 2019 and was found dead several days later. No arrests have been made, and the cause of death was ruled inconclusive. Her grandmother is organizing a demonstration Tuesday at a courthouse bordering the Crow Reservation.