Jurisdiction gaps leave MMIP families searching for accountability
WINDOW ROCK
Bernadine Beyale searches for missing people whose cases cross tribal, county and state lines. The people she looks for never notice those lines, she said. Their families do.
“A missing person doesn’t know when they’ve crossed a jurisdictional boundary,” Beyale said. “Their family finds out very quickly.”
Beyale is the founder and executive director of 4 Corners K9 Search and Rescue, a volunteer nonprofit whose dogs are trained to find living people and human remains on land and in water.
At a Sept. 15 House hearing, former Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer raised the same jurisdictional problem.
“We have built many programs, perhaps too many, but we have not yet built one continuously accountable system,” Lizer said.
“A mother whose child is missing shouldn’t have to become a jurisdictional expert just to figure out who’s looking for her child,” Beyale said.
To read the full article, please see the Sept. 17, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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