Rayne Henry left her home and child on the Moapa Band of Paiutes reservation outside Las Vegas on April 12 of this year. She was on her way to attend a concert at the Fremont Street Experience, an estimated one-hour drive. But after she left, no one heard from her.
David Blackeye is the tribal liaison for the State of Nevada’s Department of Public Safety. He consults with law enforcement agencies that have Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIP, cases.
“That last case, the Moapa case, once I heard about it, once we got the information, once we put it up on the website, I don’t think there was an hour of the day where it didn’t cross my mind,” Blackeye said.
After Blackeye added Henry’s case to the state’s MMIP website, social media carried her missing persons alert out from Southern Nevada to national social media sites.
Due to an agreement between the Mopa Band of Paiutes and local municipalities, multiple law enforcement agencies were already on the lookout for any sign of Rayne Henry in Las Vegas and on the reservation.
Off Interstate 15, near the reservation, Nevada State Police located a deceased woman’s body inside a wrecked vehicle.
Christopher Pascoe is the Moapa Band of Paiutes tribal administrator and former chief of the tribal police department. In early May, Pascoe gave an update on the case.
“Unfortunately, it was discovered that Rayne Henry was involved in a traffic collision on Interstate 15 within the boundaries of the reservation. It took about five days after the accident occurred to get final confirmation," Pascoe said. "There’s so many different leads, so many different tips and community members that truly care, and they wanted the best, they were hoping for the best. And that’s the hard part, right now, for this community. The facts are that she was involved in that accident.”
In the end, Henry was only reported missing for less than two weeks. Her mother learned her fate less than a month after she disappeared — much sooner than most loved ones of MMIP victims.
But awareness is growing.
In February 2022, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal member Anne Marie Scott was identified as the driver of a burning vehicle on Interstate 580 between Reno and Carson City. The coroner found signs of an execution shot that likely took her life before the vehicle was set on fire.
Weeks later, a young white woman, Naomi Irion, was reported to have been kidnapped in Fernley, Nevada. After the news broke, resources that could potentially have solved Scott’s case shifted to the Irion case, along with most social media attention.
Contrast that with Rayne Henry’s disappearance this year, where cross-agency cooperation and social media attention closed Henry’s case within a month's time.
Meanwhile, Scott’s case remains unsolved. Police killed the lead suspect in an unrelated confrontation. He died with any information that might have helped solve it.
Scott was one of the first MMIP cases that Blackeye added to the state’s MMIP website. Most of them remain there with no new developments
“Someboy out there knows what happened in these cases, and we’ll get the answer,” Blackeye said.
The MMIP crisis is a national one. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, estimates there are about 4,200 cases nationwide. Experts believe the actual number is much higher.
Constance Athayde is the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s Victim Services Program Director. Athayde traces the violence Indigenous people experience today to the eradication of tribes during colonization.
“Most of us can agree that when there is the implementation of a systemic methodology to destroy a culture, part of that is to destroy the families, to destroy the framework and dehumanize the people of that culture,” Athayde said.
The methodology Athayde is referring to dates back to the early 1800s. U.S. colonizers created laws to justify a century of warfare and fraudulent land acquisitions facilitating Western expansion. They ripped the remaining families apart through the boarding school program.
“We can go again through the history of it, as far as removing people from whole tracts of land to, to now. It becomes a smaller and smaller circumference of impact as far as, now we’re going to actual homes," she said. "If you’re informed, you know, that those children — we’re now finding their bodies, and so, they were the missing and the murdered, because many times they did not die of natural causes. And they certainly would have had a different impact had they been allowed to stay within home.”
Challenges in solving MMIP cases range from a lack of funding to a lack of data collection. Another issue is overlapping jurisdictions. Since tribes are sovereign nations, local law enforcement agencies don’t have implied jurisdiction for any tribal affairs.
To help solve this problem, Assemblywoman Shae Backus pushed a bill, drafted with the help of victim advocates, through the 2025 Nevada legislative session. Governor Joe Lombardo signed it into law.
It will allow any law enforcement officer to protect anyone with a court-issued domestic violence protection order. It’s meant to address those who violate court orders and then defend themselves by saying they were not aware of the orders.
“It would allow the officer to have that conversation right there with the potential abuser, and say, ‘Hey, you know this is a tribal court order. Take a look. Look at it. I'm now giving it to you and serving it at that point,'" Backus said.
In the 2023 legislative session, Backus got another big law passed. It allows non-tribal agencies to accept missing persons cases of tribal members through the Department of Public Safety. This allowed the department to build a statewide database.
“At the end of the day, it came down to our state police, who really stepped up and said, ‘You know what, Shea, we'll go ahead. We'll take the report,’" the assemblywoman said. "They figured a way how to put it into the federal database, because a lot of our local jurisdictions didn't feel comfortable with it.”
The law also added a tribal liaison position to the Department of Public Safety to help consult on state MMIP cases, the position Blackeye currently holds.
But despite the progress made through the legislature, challenges still exist.
There are discrepancies between sovereign nations and local municipalities’ case tracking. That means, currently there is no accurate centralized database at the federal or state level for Indigenous persons that are missing or murdered.
In 2021 the BIA added a small Missing and Murdered Unit to address cases nationwide. But, Blackeye said, every state is struggling with the issue.
In addition, the closure of the BIA’s Elko office will likely lead to slower response times for northern Nevada tribes, Assemblywoman Backus says. Response time is crucial to solving cases, according to Blackeye.
“Culturally we all know that the first 48 hours are important because of that show, ‘The First 48,’ right? But that really is key, and I think having delayed response times to criminal investigations is a major factor here," Blackeye said. "And the rural nature of some of these communities is a factor. If you know that you are going to have a response time to an investigation of 24 hours, I mean, that’s a tough one.”
In Nevada, days may pass before an FBI or BIA agent arrives to begin investigating.
On May 5, one day after Rayne Henry was identified by her mother, College of Southern Nevada students in Las Vegas met inside the student union. It was National MMIP Awareness Day, and it was raining outside.
Huddled around a table, the students used markers to draw red handprints on small pieces of paper. Angel Martinez, Native Heritage Alliance president, turned the drawings into buttons.
“I love buttons. I think they’re fun and easy to make and, you know, it does send a message," Martinez said. "I’ve had more than one people ask about my buttons, and ‘What does that mean?” “Did you make it?” and now I can say yes. I actually made this one.”
People participate in National MMIP awareness day by wearing red or a red handprint. Tribal dancers and advocates sometimes put a red handprint on their face to represent the decades-long struggle with higher-than-normal rates of violence against American Natives in the U.S.
Martinez has a personal connection to the symbol.
“They have meaning to me because I know what this story is. It is my story, you know. It’s my aunt’s story, it’s my grandmother’s story, all their stories, and I’m still here," Martinez said. "And I want other people to be more observant of people like me, who look like me and (to) take notice when we don’t show up somewhere.”
Pyramid Lake’s Constance Athedye encourages people to remember MMIP every day, beyond the one day designated for awareness.
“We need to remember that history happened. We’re here because of the people that came before us. It’s our duty to be able to provide a time and place that history does not get repeated," Athayde said. "So, if we’re there to be able to be a safe person or a safe place or to be able to speak out for those who don’t have voices, then that’s our responsibility. And so it’s not just a feel good thing but its saying this is my job, this is my responsibility as a human being. I need to step up and step forward for those who can’t do it.”
To report an MMIP case, contact your local law enforcement agencies.
If you have any information about Anna Marie Scott, call the state hotline at 844-733-7248. If you have any information about a case somewhere else in the U.S., call the BIA’s Missing and Murder Unit at 883-560-2065.
