The Department of Public Safety calls the Missing Indigenous Persons Report, released this week, a first-of-its-kind effort to publicly release data on Alaska Native and American Indian people missing in Alaska. The data includes whether police believe the disappearance was related to criminal activity or not.
, a nationwide database overseen by the U.S. Department of Justice. The state says it has committed to regularly updating the NamUs data, something that it hasn’t always done before and isn’t mandated.What’s new about the database is a public accounting of the circumstances around each person’s disappearance.
About three-quarters of the cases were ruled environmental – meaning a person is believed to have died or disappeared in the wilderness as the result of a plane crash, boat sinking or other outdoor accident but their remains were never found. Some of the cases date back to the 1960s. In Alaska, even when a person has been declared dead in legal proceedings they remain on a missing persons list until law enforcement “lays eyes on them,” said McDaniel.
Of the 280 total cases, 215 were ruled environmental, 30 not suspicious, 17 unknown and 18 suspicious. The database offers what is in some cases the first confirmation that police think criminal activity was involved in the person’s unsolved disappearance. The information on the circumstances of disappearances is useful and will hopefully present a clearer picture to law enforcement of the overall situation, Apok said. It is also validating for families to see what they have long suspected about their loved ones disappearance: “For a very long time we’ve been hearing from families, this is what happened and it hasn’t been recognized,” she said.
“Going missing while going on a hike or hunting is very different than someone being abducted,” Apok said. “We really wanted to clarify those circumstances.”
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