This story comes to you from MPR News through a partnership with Sahan Journal.
Natosha White has spent the past year grieving her late son Evan Denny. In late April, White joined others at the Minneapolis American Indian Center to remember their loved ones who have died or gone missing.
White came with her daughter, her daughter-in-law, her nieces and nephews. Together, they painted small rocks with the names of those they lost.
“It’s rough to be in this building, just because this is a place where we had his wake and funeral,” White said. “It took me a little minute to come back here. But it also can be a place of healing in some way.”
The rocks will be laid out as a path on Tuesday, inside that same building, for a day of remembrance for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives. The day is observed every year on May 5 across the country.
A year after Denny was killed alongside three other young people in south Minneapolis, his family is among those gathering in remembrance. The day comes as Minnesota’s MMIR office assists a growing number of families. The state office is assisting with more cases — and closing more of them — as families who once waited years for help are increasingly coming forward.
Ana Negrete is the community planner at Minnesota’s Office of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. She says more families are reaching out to the office than at any point since it opened.
The clearest change is in homicide and suspicious death cases. When the office’s Gaagige-Mikwendaagoziwag Reward Fund launched in July 2025, the office was assisting with four open cases. Today, the office is assisting with 21 cases.
The fund offers up to $10,000 for those who can provide tips for missing persons and homicide investigations. In some of the homicide, suspicious death, and missing persons cases, families can use those funds to purchase search kits or purchase space on roadside billboards asking people with information related to the case to come forward.
Negrete credits the reward fund — and the billboards advertising it that have gone up across the state — for bringing families forward who had been waiting, sometimes for years, without answers.
“Other families are starting to think, okay, well, is this something that could lead to resolution for my loved one that was murdered?” Negrete said. The fund, she said, has given families “a kind of renewed sense of hope.”
For families like White’s, that visibility matters in another way too. It means more people know they aren’t alone.
In the year since Evan Denny’s death, his family has been intentional in observing his absence. The family has a meal together every month to share their memories of him with one another.
“We talk about him all the time like he’s here,” White said. Food, she said, was “his love language”— chicken, spaghetti, his auntie’s fry bread and his grandma’s tamales.
Joe Rainey is a cousin to Denny and to 28-year-old LeRas Rainey, another victim who died at Hennepin County Medical Center days later.
Today, Joe Rainey lives in Green Bay, Wis., on the Oneida Nation reservation, but he grew up in south Minneapolis and travels back often. He’s a father of five and a performing artist. He has been thinking about how the younger people in the family — cousins, friends, and community — are carrying the loss of someone their own age.
What he has noticed, he said, is that they are finding their own ways of grieving. Some participate in the monthly gathering. Some put up tributes for others to see. Some lean on each other.
“I think they want to commemorate and memorialize their relative and do things and the way that will make them feel comfortable, because it’s a difficult task, task when you’re going through grief, to find that comfort,” Rainey said.
The family held a memorial dinner on the anniversary of Denny’s death. Rainey said it felt different from the funeral last year. The memorial dinner was solemn, he says, but his family was also able to come together to smile and laugh as they told stories about their loved one.
“I’m happy that they’re going forward,” Rainey said.
What he wants is for the young people in his family to know their feelings are real and worth taking seriously — and that grief is something they can move through with the help of family, culture, and spirituality.
“It’s free to be a good relative,” he said. “Free to check on your relatives and your elders, talk with them. Send them a text message.”
Tuesday’s gathering at the Minneapolis American Indian Center will include a reading of names of missing and murdered relatives. Negrete says the list is drawn from families, from the state’s missing persons clearinghouse, from the office’s own caseload, and from community partners, but it is not comprehensive.
For Natosha White, what helps most is sharing space with other grieving families.
“I’m just thankful that we have support and that we have events like this to honor our loved ones,” she said. “I think it’s just very important for those to know that there is people out here like us, and you know we’re there for each other, because only we know what we’re going through on this side.”
