Families ride through San Juan County to raise missing Indigenous awareness

Three people were indicted in November 2025 on federal charges tied to the killing of Zachariah Juwaun Shorty, and his mother, Evangeline Randall-Shorty, carried his poster when the Ride for the Missing rolled out of Farmington on April 25. Federal prosecutors say Shorty was shot on July 21, 2020, and found dead four days later on a dirt pathway in Nenahnezad on the Navajo Nation.

The ride moved along U.S. Highway 550 through Kirtland, Bloomfield, Cuba, San Ysidro and Bernalillo, turning the road itself into a public reminder of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis. Many riders carried the red handprint symbol that has become closely tied to MMIP advocacy, while Stacey Banach rode with photos of her sister. Randall-Shorty said the route was intentional because families in those communities have all been affected.

The ride also came during the final Gathering of Nations weekend in Albuquerque, linking the journey from San Juan County to a larger cultural gathering. Organizers used the event to press for accountability in cases that remain open, unresolved or difficult for families to track across tribal, state and federal systems. For many families, the questions are still basic: who is investigating, what has changed, and why some disappearances and killings still leave relatives waiting years for answers.

New Mexico officials have tried to respond more systematically. Attorney General Raúl Torrez launched an MMIP portal on March 12, 2024, to provide real-time public access to active cases and improve communication among families, law enforcement and tribal partners. The New Mexico Indian Affairs Department says the crisis affects Indigenous people on and off reservations and in cities, and that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham created the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Advisory Council in 2019 through House Bill 278 and continued it with Executive Order 2021-013 on May 5, 2021.

A 2025 study funded by the National Institute of Justice brought together the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the Urban Institute and the Coalition to End Violence Against Native Women to improve MMIP data collection, analysis and reporting in New Mexico. The research highlights the jurisdictional complexity that often slows these cases and the burden carried by families who must keep pushing while agencies sort out responsibility.

In San Juan County, the ride made that burden visible on a highway most residents know by heart. The posters, the red handprints and the route through Farmington, Kirtland and Bloomfield carried a plain message: awareness means little without answers, and answers still have not come fast enough for too many Indigenous families.