"Lighting The Way For Those Not Here": How Can Technology Researchers Help Resist the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) Crisis?

Abstract

Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island face disproportionate rates of disappearance and murder, a genocide rooted in settler-colonial violence and systemic erasure. Technology plays a crucial role in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) crisis: it perpetuates systemic violence and impedes investigations, yet also enables sites of advocacy, healing, and resistance. For example, Native communities utilize AMBER alerts, digital news, sovereign crowdsourced databases, social media groups, and resistance movements to mobilize searches, amplify awareness, and honor missing relatives. Yet little research in HCI has critically examined the role of technology in shaping the MMIR crisis. Thus, we qualitatively analyze 140 webpages to identify sociotechnical barriers that hinder communities' efforts, while highlighting actions that foster healing, safety, and resilience. We grounded our analysis in stories that resist epistemic erasure through relational accountability, critical humility, cultural sensitivity, and refusal. Finally, we provide recommendations for HCI to recognize self-determination and sovereignty of Indigenous technologies, direct action to support families, and honor Indigenous onto-epistemologies that cease epistemic violence.