Just two weeks ago, a 15-year-old girl from the Colville Reservation went missing.
Maleigha Yallup’s disappearance adds to a growing crisis. She is now among the 56 missing Indigenous women and girls in Washington state.
“Maleigha, we love you and miss you. Please make contact so we know that you are OK,’” said Nick Pierre, general manager of the Northern Quest Resort & Casino and Kalispel member, on behalf of the missing person’s family.
The Kalispel Tribe paid tribute to the 112 Indigenous people missing in Washington state at the Northern Quest Resort & Casino Monday afternoon, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. And with the Indigenous teenager who disappeared in the last couple of weeks, the event served as a powerful reminder of moving from awareness to action as Indigenous people, especially women and girls, continue to go missing across the state.
“With this annual installation, the Kalispel Tribe and Northern Quest Resort & Casino bring attention to our missing mothers, sisters, daughters and aunties in an effort to help break the silence around this horrible epidemic,” Pierre said during the event.
According to the National Crime Information Center, Washington state was reported in 2020 as one of the 10 states with the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. About half of these 112 cases originate in Eastern Washington.
Trevor Rusho, prevention specialist and outreach coordinator for the Kalispel Tribe's Victim Assistance Services, said this could be because many tribes reside in rural areas that don’t have many resources.
“There’s also a lot of tribes in Washington, so that does correlate to that, but it doesn’t take away from the disparity and the demographics and the percentages of missing, murdered Indigenous people compared to other races and ethnicities,” Rusho said.
During the event, they had 56 red dresses hung on the ceiling to bring attention to the missing women in Washington state.
Thea George-Garcia, part of the Colville Tribe, said many tribal cultures across the United States and Canada believe that the color red is what the spirits can see.
“By wearing red today, and just in general, in ceremonies, we’re connecting to them in a way – that’s how we know they see us, and that they’re here for us, and that we are here for them too,” George-Garcia said.
She also emphasized most cases commonly go unheard of, unnoticed and under-reported, which continues to affect their families and communities.
Sky Pagaling, executive director of the Camas Foundation and Kalispel member, agreed and said they have seen that missing and slain Indigenous people are not being reported nor investigated on a local and state level.
“There are missing family members, whether it’s in the Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Colville or Kalispel Tribe, and sometimes they attribute to the lifestyle – they deal with drug and alcohol abuse, but none of that justifies someone going missing, none of that justifies murder,” Pagaling said.
The Pacific Northwest last year debuted a special new prosecutor position dedicated solely to cases of missing and slain Indigenous people, and Washington in 2022 also adopted a special highway alert system to advertise cases of vulnerable Indigenous people.
Rusho said the tribe’s victim assistance services program provides multiple resources for Indigenous people, including crisis intervention, domestic violence services, legal assistance and more.
“The Kalispel Tribe Victim Assistance Services has a location here in Airway Heights, so we serve Spokane County as a whole and we have an office in Cusick, so we serve Pend Oreille County as well,” Rusho said. “We helped 780 victims in 2024, and it was our highest year, which shows the need is growing.”
The Trump administration, however, has made it difficult for the program to get funding to continue helping Indigenous people, he said.
Rusho recalled the tribal services program was filling out grant applications a couple of months ago and, when they went back to the website to continue filling out the applications, the grants were nonexistent.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Rusho said. “We’re doing what we can with what we have, but there has been uncertainty with the current administration when it comes to our federal grants and what we can provide.”
He said because the grants are no longer available, the program is considering cutting money toward some of their services. However, he’s not sure yet what that would look like.
“It’s just scary, because how far will it go until there is no funding?” Rusho said. “It breaks my heart for sure.”
In response to these ongoing challenges, Pagaling said he and others are putting together strategic and community plans to fight obstacles to reporting missing people so that they can amplify those missing across the Inland Northwest.
“Communities are currently working on those things by either connecting with the law enforcement agencies or bringing it up in a town hall meeting,” Pagaling said. “The only number that’s acceptable for our people going missing is zero.”
Monica Carrillo-Casas is a Murrow News fellow for Spokane Public Radio and The Spokesman-Review. All stories produced by Murrow Local News fellows can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. Image rights may vary.
