Veronica and Buck welcome the MMIW Search & Hope Alliance

Presenter: Washington state has a ‘Missing Indigenous Person’ alert. Why doesn’t Oregon? Kimberly Lining from the MMIW Search & Hope Alliance visited with Veronica and Buck from the program ‘Stand Up & Be Heard,’ right here on KEPW 97.3:

Buck: I’m Buck Wylde, and I want to start today saying this: When we ask hard questions, when we refuse to look away, we become unstoppable. And I want to introduce someone who embodies that mission completely. She’s fearless, she’s dedicated, she’s a voice to the voiceless, please welcome: Miss Veronica Seals.

Veronica: And thank you for everybody listening today. I want to speak directly to you, not as broadcaster, but as a community member, just like you. If your family is searching for answers about a missing loved one: We see you, we hear you, and we are here to amplify your voice until someone listens.

Every conversation we have on this show is asking all of you to join us, to stand up, to be heard, because that’s how change happens—from the ground up, from communities like ours refusing to be silent.

Okay, Kimberly, how are you doing today?

Kimberly Lining (MMIW Search & Hope Alliance): I’m doing pretty good. I’m feeling really tired. Yesterday was a heavy day as we finished the first part of repatriation for an Alaskan tribal member.

Veronica: Oh, wow.

Kimberly: We are working on full repatriation for Marian McWhorter who went missing back in the ‘70s. And she has been sitting in the medical examiner’s office for the last 50 years (Oh my goodness), until yesterday.

And we were able to bring her wonderful, beautiful sister, Valerie Nagle, and join her with her sister, Marian McWhorter, finally, after 50 years. So—

Buck and Veronica: That must have been very emotional. Yeah, very emotional.

Kimberly: It was, you know, I haven’t really cried yet. I’m sure that I will. Like we talked about last week, right—compartmentalization. So (yeah), when I compartmentalize, I tuck that away and sometimes it’ll just hit me out of the blue.

Buck and Veronica: Yeah, know what you’re saying, definitely. So let’s talk about some more about what you’re doing.

Kimberly: Okay. So about, almost two and a half, three years ago, I started the organization.

Well, actually we’re a privately-funded volunteer group. We are not a nonprofit.

We started searching for missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. The last few years have been a wild rollercoaster ride. It is a very real problem.

Currently on the Oregon Missing Indigenous Persons List (via the Oregon State Police), we have 15 missing children under the age of 18, 10 missing elders over the age of 55 and up, and then seven missing middle adults, accounting for 32 people on the ‘Missing List.’ (Wow.)

So we’re heading on and attacking this situation to, really cut down on these and like we spoke about last week, the last entry was Leona (Sharon) Kinsey, who went missing Oct. 25, 1999. And then you’ll see this huge 14-year gap where the next entry on the OSP Indigenous Missing Persons List was Zachary Beshir Porter and he was entered on July 25, 2013.

So we have this huge gap and that’s going to create a lot of data analysis that I can’t even imagine how deep we’re going to have to dive to find that. So we are trying to solve what we can of what’s in front of us.

Buck and Veronica: Yeah. How does the state justify that gap?

Kimberly: There is no justification. I have asked in the past why Oregon does not have a Missing Indigenous Persons alert, and the words were, ‘I don’t know.’

Buck and Veronica: Wow, that’s not a good enough answer. That’s, yeah, that’s really not, not a good enough answer, no.

Kimberly: And that’s not the police, and that’s not DHS, even. That’s Oregon representatives and other Oregon bureaucratic political people that have the power to do something and they just haven’t.

Buck and Veronica: That’s so sad. What can we, the listeners or the community, do to help you guys change that?

Kimberly: I encourage the people in the state of Oregon to write letters to their representatives because, I’m just going to go ahead and put it out there. Oregon has a program called Everbridge. Everbridge is responsible for putting out Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts. It is the software program that literally disseminates these alerts, right? (Yeah.)

So the state of Oregon already pays for this program. And people need to write letters to their state representatives because it costs zero dollars (Wow) to put it on a bill, to make it go into effect, to have a ‘Missing Indigenous Persons’ alert.

And we have spoken to state representatives and we’ve spoken to commissioners and you know, getting somewhere and pushing for it has taken years.

And there was a House Bill passed back in 2024, I want to say, but then it got set aside because there was a price tag put on it, and we all know sometimes money beats out (Yeah) whatever else is there.

So, in the last year, I figured out how the state of Oregon can do it for free, and lo and behold, we find out the state of Oregon’s already paying for the program. (Oh my goodness.)

Why not? Why not? They just put it on our bill and put it out there, and I, a lot of people are like, oh, should we talk about that? Yeah, we should talk about it. Put it out there. Yeah. They failed on something that’s free.

It’s free. It’s free to put in a bill. It’s free to pass, and at the end of the day, we can mirror the state of Washington’s Missing Indigenous Persons alert. Yeah. So that way we have a criteria that this alert would fall under that would then disseminate that alert. So—

Buck and Veronica: There you go. Do you think it would help if we gathered some signatures or if we did something like that? Demanding that we wanted it?

Kimberly: At this point, anything. And the louder we can be about it and people can–if they want to help and be part of that actionable solution, find out who your representative is in your district and write a letter.

If people want to help, of course, we can always use volunteers and you can find us at MMIW Search & Hope Alliance. We do also have a business Venmo account under MMIW Search & Hope Alliance, and you’ll find the name right under there to be Kimberly_Lining7008. That is ours.

We have two separate funds set up in there. One is for searches, on-the-ground things, and the other fund is for gas and stuff for our volunteers because we don’t exist without our volunteers for sure.

And Jason Shifflett, one of our head volunteers, man, you know, this guy’s put so much time and money into it and it takes a lot of equipment, it takes a lot to—right now we’re saving for ground sonar so we can go over the ground with a sonar machine and, lots of money is involved, but we’re doing it without. So—

Buck and Veronica: Good for you. Yeah, absolutely. And anything we can do to promote, to get you guys to be able, we’re here for you, continue on, we’re here for you. And, you’re doing such great work. Admire that. Yes, we do admire you 100%.

Kimberly: And a lot of people say, I can’t find you. Our symbol is a hummingbird, something small but mighty. But instead of the word ‘and’ you have to put in the ‘&’ symbol. So it’s MMIW Search & Hope Alliance.

Buck and Veronica: Oh, great. Gotcha. Great. And boy, I know that we’re going to support you a lot more and we, like we said, we’re going to keep bringing you on, keep talking about these cases every month. We want you to come on at least once.

Presenter: That is Kimberly Lining from the MMIW Search & Hope Alliance, encouraging you to contact your legislators ‘for’ the Missing Indigenous Person alert.

Kimberly is a regular guest on “Stand Up & Be Heard” with Veronica and Buck every Saturday at noon, right here on KEPW 97.3, Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.