Two years after Peter Martin disappeared from Minnesota’s Fond Du Lac reservation, his family continues searching despite a stalled federal inquiry. Relatives say the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation into his whereabouts stalled after the assigned agent left the position in early 2025.

“They’ve never had a person take his space for this region and yeah, we haven’t heard from them since,” said family friend Kayla Jackson.

Created in 2021 to tackle widespread violence against Native Americans and direct new funding toward cold cases, the bureau’s Missing and Murdered Unit has been hobbled by staffing shortages since its inception during President Joe Biden’s administration.

A federal audit by the Interior Department’s internal watchdog found that these personnel deficits created a backlog of inquiries while leaving families without mandatory victim services.

Funding for the program expanded from $12 million to $17 million between 2021 and 2024. During that timeframe, however, auditors discovered that 39% of the unit’s funds were redirected to other Bureau of Indian Affairs police costs, including vehicle upgrades.

Nearly half of the unit’s positions remained unfilled last year, occurring as the bureau lost one-third of its overall staff from job cuts under President Donald Trump.

The bureau says it has adopted many of the report’s recommendations, ranging from streamlining referral processes to training staff on victim service mandates. However, federal auditors caution that hiring weaknesses persist, leaving numerous families still in the dark regarding their loved ones’ cases.

“It is nothing but heartbreaking just to see how inadequate the response has already been for so many of these situations,” said David Adams, an Albuquerque-based attorney, former federal prosecutor and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Hundreds of cases languished for years

The Missing and Murdered Unit maintained 83 active cases and nearly 400 unresolved referrals in November 2024, according to a Sept. 9 report from Interior’s Office of Inspector General. The division lacked any defined timeline for processing referrals.

The audit also revealed that agents handled unmanageable workloads, with some saddled with administrative chores, such as referral research, alongside active criminal investigations.

Family members of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places felt hopeful when a Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator was assigned to her cold case in 2022. Stops Pretty Places had recently turned 18 when her body was discovered near the Crow Reservation in 2019.

Her aunt, Grace Bulltail, said the assigned agent was difficult to reach and provided few updates. Last year, Bulltail learned the agent never obtained full access to local law enforcement files before being reassigned to other duties.

News reporters emailed bureau officials requesting comment on the case.

Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, said delays and structural flaws among federal investigators compound families’ grief.

“These are families who have often experienced institutional failure already,” she said. “A system designed as a response to that history cannot ask families to keep waiting.”

Victims’ families fell through the cracks

In eight out of 13 cases reviewed by inspector general auditors, the assigned officer failed to contact bureau staff dedicated to family victim support. One worker noted that families were directed to outside organizations because the unit employed just two victim specialists nationwide.

Martin was 31 years old when reported missing following a welfare check on the Fond Du Lac reservation in 2024. Relatives remembered an outgoing man who played sports with local kids and accompanied his nieces and nephews out trick-or-treating.

Relatives said they receive periodic updates from Fond Du Lac police officers, but were never connected with BIA victim specialists.

The official BIA website does not list an assigned agent for Martin’s case. Bureau leadership was asked for comment.

Federal efforts on missing and murdered cases

The Trump administration states that it is expanding actions targeting elevated rates of violence against Native populations. Last month, the FBI announced a baseline reward of $25,000 for public information regarding dozens of unresolved cold cases on tribal lands.

Bureau of Indian Affairs officials said steps have been implemented under President Donald Trump to improve case processing and ensure families receive assistance. They noted that most audit recommendations had been acted upon.

“The deficiencies identified in the OIG audit reflect operations under the previous administration that were inconsistent with the objectives outlined in Operation Lady Justice,” the statement said, referring to a presidential task force established by the first Trump administration in 2019 to address the crisis of missing and killed Indigenous persons.

In February, the Missing and Murdered Unit assisted with recovering and identifying two sets of human remains on the Chickasaw Nation, resolving a cold missing persons investigation dating back over a decade.

Deer said new federal and state task forces and specialized policing initiatives have increased public awareness of the crisis.

“The government has stepped up in some ways to appropriate resources, but implementation matters,” she said.

Meanwhile, tribal police departments, which are frequently the first to respond in cases involving Native people, remain under-resourced with restricted capacity to investigate complex crimes, she said.

“What I always come back to is whether or not this money could be better utilized by tribes themselves,” Deer said.