FBI sets $25,000 minimum reward for dozens of unsolved Indian Country cases

(AP) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has established a minimum reward of $25,000 in cases where people went missing or were killed in Indian Country, part of a broader effort to address high rates of violence affecting Native American communities. The new minimum applies to more than 50 unsolved homicides and missing-person cases in tribal communities. Most of the cases are less than 10 years old, though a dozen have been unsolved for more than two decades, an AP analysis found.

Victims’ families and experts are unsure the higher amounts will be enough to get tipsters to come forward, citing people’s fears and distrust of the federal government. “Everybody’s scared in Oglala,” said Lisa Carlow, whose father Patrick Carlow Sr. was found dead in his Pine Ridge Reservation home in 2023.

“So to me it’s like, okay, what do you guys know that you’re not saying?” The FBI investigates federal crimes on nearly 200 Native American reservations, along with the U.S. At the end of 2025, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center recorded just under 1,500 active cases involving missing Native Americans, though not all become federal cases. The FBI cited several cases in its recent announcement, including that of 8-year-old Maleeka Boone, who it said was likely struck by a vehicle on the Navajo Nation, and San Carlos Apache teenager Emily Pike, whose body was found after she disappeared from an Arizona group home.

Higher rewards could stir new interest Mary Kathryn Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an attorney who advocates for families of missing Native Americans, said federal investigators often “parachute in” to investigate crimes in tight-knit communities where witnesses may stay silent because of distrust and fear of retribution. Still, she said, larger rewards could provide an incentive for people to talk, and show families their loved ones’ cases are being taken seriously. “We have people in Indian Country who know what happened to our relatives,” she said.

Luana Ross, who is Bitterroot Salish and a co-director of the Native Voices program at the University of Washington, said cash rewards could boost interest but often aren’t paid out. “It is my opinion that in reservation communities, people would be extremely reluctant to turn a friend or relative into a criminal justice system that hasn’t …