SAULT STE. MARIE, MI— Community response training for Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons will be held in Sault Ste. Marie next Monday.
In 2021 and 2022, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and Bay Mills Indian Community collaborated with the Justice Department and other federal agencies to create a missing persons response plan. It was one of six pilot projects across the country.
Dr. Aaron Payment is Tribal Council for the Sault Tribe and Tribal Nations Fellow for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He says for years, American Indian advocates had been trying to bring to light the disproportionate number of Indigenous people who go missing each year. He says the project brought together local law enforcement, tribal law enforcement, and all the tribe’s services and courts to speed the process of finding someone who’s been abducted.
“Time is of essence, so collaborating across departments and across agencies, across governments, increases the likelihood that we will get on the ball and start trying to rescue anybody that’s missing.”
Payment says the project outcome created a protocol for defining each department’s role so the process can move quickly. He notes just six weeks after finishing the plan and dedicating a detective to MMIP cases, a child was abducted from the reservation by someone they met online. The child was recovered within 72 hours.
Payment says the Sault and Bay Mills tribes wanted to make available the benefit they received by being coached by the feds so that other tribes and agencies won’t have to start from scratch.
“So, our plan is to hold a session where we walk through how all of it came together, and then to very pragmatically go, ‘Here’s our steps; here’s our protocol; here’s a copy of our protocol; here’s how to work collaboratively to pull it all together.’”
The training takes place next Monday, September 29 at 9 a.m. at the Kewadin Casino Convention Center in Sault Ste. Marie. For more information, call 906-440-8946.
