For sisters Raquel Dee and Theola Harvey remembering loved ones who went missing or have been murdered isn’t just a day, week or month-long observance. It’s every single day since their cousin Darian Ray Nevayaktewa disappeared from Hopi tribal lands in 2008.
“It’s been so long that, me, personally, I know that he’s not here but I just want to bring him home and let him be at peace,” Raquel said.
The pair were among hundreds who participated in Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness Day events across Arizona last week — gatherings marked by red handprints and posters bearing the names and photos of lost loved ones.
Many came to show solidarity. Others came seeking support. But some came to repeat the same concerns Indigenous communities have raised for years: the injustice of MMIP is ongoing and little is being done to help them.
That frustration was echoed at events in Tucson and across the Phoenix metro, where tribal leaders, advocates and families described an issue that isn’t new but is getting harder to ignore, especially in the face of continued inaction.
“He never came”
Theola says she used to babysit Darian when she was in high school and views him as her little brother. The sisters described him as “a handsome boy” who made everyone laugh and somehow always found himself “getting into something.”
His grandma even gave him the nickname “Ootie,” which they explained is a Hopi word used when something is surprising, such as all the times Darian would get into trouble as a little kid.
“It just stuck with him, even the relatives in Tesuque Pueblo, they all call him Ootie, they don’t call him by his first name,” Theola told Arizona Luminaria shortly after the end of a May 2 MMIP Prayer Walk organized by the Phoenix Indian Center’s Youth Advisory Council.
Theola says she didn’t see Darian for about 10 years before his disappearance because she moved away from home for college. Other members of their family also went several years without seeing him after he moved from his father’s homelands on the Hopi Nation to his mother’s homelands in Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico.
But after graduating from high school, Darian returned to the Hopi Nation in the summer of 2008 to visit his family. While he made his rounds to some, he never got the chance to see either of the sisters.
“I was so happy to get to see him, he was gonna stop by to see me and my new baby but he never came,” Theola said.
“It’s just sad that he ends up going out there to see his relatives from his dad’s side and he ends up missing,” Raquel added with tears forming in her eyes. “His mother is getting sick from worrying a lot and wondering where her baby at. I feel for her.”
Darian was last seen on June 19, 2008, after he had gone to a powwow with some relatives and later went out with some teenagers. He was 19 years old at the time. For months, the family searched on foot for Darian but has found no trace of him to date.
“There’s a whole bunch of stories that came about with his disappearance,” said Raquel. “That they were drinking, that he was with a girl and her boyfriend got mad or something and then everything just went unresolved from there.”
She says their family suspects foul play and that his case remains open with the FBI, though it does not appear on the agency’s webpage of “Indian Country Cases” that it’s actively seeking information about. Darian’s case is listed on the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ MMIP webpage; however, his mother told New Mexico In Depth in 2023 that she struggled to get the agency to communicate with her.
“To this day, we feel that there’s still no justice,” said Raquel. “The people that he was with that night, they’re out walking free, they’re out doing whatever. And nobody has been arrested.”
Tribal leader acknowledges gap in new Turquoise Alert system
During an MMIP gathering at the Arizona Capitol May 5, Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis told participants he felt the weight of the moment as soon as he arrived.
“Seeing the red here, seeing all of the names of all of our relatives that we will never forget,” he said. “This is a powerful thing.”
Lewis in his speech gave a nod to Arizona’s new Turquoise Alert system – which he helped implement – and emphasized the importance of coming together and having “a collective show of force that we will not be deterred from seeking justice, in seeking finality, for all of our loved ones.”
He then pointed out that there still isn’t a nationwide or even statewide database for MMIP, even as he said Arizona ranks second nationally for MMIP cases and first for unsolved cold cases — numbers he pointed out were likely an undercount.
“When there’s no coordinated approach, gaps happen within the system and the most vulnerable, our relatives, fall within the cracks,” Lewis said. “And justice is not served.”
“I am so upset and disappointed that there has not been any movement moving forward,” he continued. “We have to do better.”
Lewis also acknowledged for the first time publicly a major gap in the state’s new Turquoise Alert system reported at length by Luminaria: it does not apply to missing children labeled runaways.
“Just because we have a minor that is categorized as a runaway … that individual should get the same protections under the law as any other Missing and Murdered Indigenous person,” he said. “Right now, if there is a Native American runaway, that Native American runaway does not get the same priority or protections under the law.”
“And that’s exactly what happened to Emily Pike,” Lewis continued. “That is something that we need to change; we need to change yesterday, especially after the namesake of the bill is Emily Pike.”
“I was hoping that it wasn’t her”
The Turquoise Alert isn’t only failing children labeled as runaways. Some families told Arizona Luminaria last week the alert didn’t help them when their adult child went missing, including 28-year-old Passion Schurz, who went missing from the Salt River Pima‑Maricopa Indian Community March 19 and was found dead more than a week later in Scottsdale. She was a mother of two.
“She was very loving,” Anna Anderson, Passion’s mom, told Luminaria during the tribe’s MMIP remembrance gathering May 5. “She would always help, like she didn’t want me to do anything to stress myself out. She just was such a bundle of joy.”
Anna says Passion struggled with addiction but had been sober for nearly a year. She moved in with her grandmother to be closer to the treatment facility she was attending and was even recently approved to become a peer support specialist in her program.
The day she disappeared, Passion told her mom she was “so very happy” because she’d soon be getting help with buying a vehicle. Then later that evening, Passion left the house and wasn’t heard from again.
“She had left everything behind,” Anna said. “That’s the thing that really alerted us was that she left her things behind that she carried around everywhere, things that I knew she would have taken with her.”
Anna says she waited a few days before filing a missing persons report March 22 with the Salt River Police Department – a delay she thought was required before such a report could be made to police.
She asked for a Turquoise Alert, but says the agency refused to request one from the Arizona Department of Public Safety because Passion was “not in great danger.” The department also claimed to have received reports of sightings of Passion, though Anna now questions the reliability of those reports given to police.
“They had asked her history with drugs and alcohol and I kind of feel like that took into a factor,” she said.
The Scottsdale Police Department confirmed they found Passion dead on March 28. Anna says she believes someone harmed Passion and has “several suspicions” that she cannot share publicly because the case is under investigation.
“I was hoping that it wasn’t her, and I still kind of feel like it wasn’t her,” Anna said as tears streamed down her face.
“I just feel like someone did this to her, something bad happened,” she continued, adding that she believes a Turquoise Alert could have saved Passion’s life.
“I really feel like if someone was doing something to her or had something to do with her, that they would have seen that alert and been like, ‘Oh they got her on alert … I’m not even going to mess with her.’”
“I mean, we don’t know how this happened at all,” Anna continued. “Like we didn’t know if she had turned around and went back to her old life, and we didn’t know if she went out somewhere and somebody grabbed her right away and held her hostage, so how can the police just say she’s not in danger?”
Task force efforts largely unseen
Some attendees told Luminaria they had never heard of the Turquoise Alert before last week. Others didn’t know there were multiple task forces in Arizona working to address MMIP, and a few who did said they had no clue what the groups were working on.
The state’s task force — which initially began as a study committee under former Gov. Doug Ducey — was formally established by Gov. Katie Hobbs in early 2023 and is set to end later this year. It’s not yet known if the group will be renewed.
Apart from organizing the first-ever National MMIP Coordinator Gathering in 2024 and a series of survivor and family listening sessions late last year, the task force has largely operated outside public view.
Citing the sensitive nature of MMIP, the task force’s listening sessions were closed to the public and members of the press. And while Luminaria was among the few news organizations invited to cover the task force’s inaugural conference, access at the event remained limited.
The task force’s end‑of‑year reports through 2024 revealed that much of 2023 was spent on planning, while in 2024 the task force focused on raising awareness about the state’s victim compensation fund, developing a law‑enforcement training, addressing sober‑living concerns and throwing its support behind the creation of the Turquoise Alert.
The Southern Arizona MMIP Task Force — also established in early 2023 — has been even more difficult to track. Initial attempts from Luminaria for updates about the task force, including its members, went unanswered in 2024. Unlike the state’s task force, it’s unclear if the group is required to submit any annual reports detailing its work.
According to KOLD News 13, the task force held its first meeting in April 2025, nearly two years after forming.
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, at a May 5 press conference to raise awareness about MMIP, characterized the Southern Arizona MMIP Task Force as a group that remains in its early stages, particularly as it relates to data collection. Her specific role, if any, in relation to the task force was not immediately clear, and the group’s full list of members has yet to be shared publicly.
Conover said she wants to implement a more user-friendly tracking system for MMIP data in Southern Arizona. More specifically, she proposed embedding lawyers-in-training — typically University of Arizona students from her office to the Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O’odham tribal nations to look into case files and create an organized database.
“Getting the message out is difficult and keeping attention on cases so that they hopefully stay active and don’t go cold is the real challenge here and data is kind of the root of that,” she said. “So we’re looking to partner in both (tribal) police departments this summer to see if we can’t be a real partner in trying to identify the data that we have.”
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