WA’s missing Indigenous persons alert system saw a strong start
Six months in, 22 of 31 missing persons have been found. But critical relationships between police and tribal governments show room for improvement. In the six months since Washington began using its new alert system for missing Indigenous people in July, 22 of 31 missing people have been successfully found alive. The new system is still being developed, but both law enforcement and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force are happy with the progress so far. Not every missing alert story has had a happy ending. Since the new system was launched, one person was found dead and eight are still missing.
When COVID-19 first hit the U.S. in early 2020, urban centers like New York City became a focus of national attention. But as the disease spread throughout the U.S. later that spring, the Navajo Nation emerged as a disease hotspot, with case rates rising higher than anywhere else in the country. Newly compiled data reveals how severely the pandemic impacted Indigenous communities in Arizona at the onset of the pandemic, and it shows how the community’s response helped reverse the trends in 2021. Arizona’s Apache County, home to portions of the Navajo Nation, had the highest excess death rate of any large county nationwide in both 2020 and 2021, while neighboring Navajo County had the fourth-highest rate in 2020 and second-highest in 2021. These largely rural areas were already vulnerable to COVID-19, facing barriers to healthcare access and high rates of chronic diseases prior to the pandemic. . .. ….Those are your headlines at this hour……I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI Newscenter…
