Minnesota’s Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls Office steps into the light

When Maia Yang’s niece Amarie Alowonle was shot at Sanborn Park in Robbinsdale in May 2025, the family was thrust into a grief they had never prepared for. Amarie was 19 years old. She died a week later from her injuries. Nearly a year later, no one has been arrested.

In the aftermath, Yang did what many families in crisis do, she searched. She Googled resources, advocates, anyone who could help her sister Tatiana Kilgore navigate the impossible weight of losing a child to violence. That search led her to the Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls.

“I reached out to them,” Yang said. “Amarie, she was Black, Native, I was like, wow, this would be perfect for them to step in and know about her story.”

The office, established by the Minnesota Legislature, is one of the few of its kind in the country. Led by Director Kaleena Burkes and a six-person team, it was created to address a crisis that has long existed in the shadows: the disproportionate rates at which Black women and girls go missing, are harmed and are killed, and the systemic failures that have allowed those cases to go unresolved and underreported.

On April 13, the office hosted its 2026 Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls Day on the Hill. A day of action, remembrance, and truth-telling at the Minnesota State Capitol. Tatiana Kilgore, Amarie’s mother, was among those who spoke. So was Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, who helped champion the office’s creation and addressed the crowd as an Anishinaabe woman, a survivor of domestic violence and a mother.

“This work was not created in a vacuum,” Flanagan said. “It was born out of love and out of a movement. It was built through the courage of community members who refused to stay silent.”

For Burkes, the day represented both a milestone and a call to action.

“This year’s Day on the Hill is focused on awareness, visibility and truth-telling,” Burkes said. “We are working to elevate the reality of the violence Black women and girls are navigating, while centering the voices of impacted families.”

Since opening, the office has faced significant challenges. Among them is simply making people aware it exists, and that the epidemic it was created to address is real.

“There is still a gap in understanding the realities Black women and girls face,” Burkes said. “And as a six-person team, we are balancing community outreach, training, collaboration and direct family support, all without a national blueprint to follow.”

A second barrier is data. The office does not yet have direct access to law enforcement systems and missing persons data, making it difficult to fully map the scope of the crisis. And then there is the media.

“‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ is real,” Burkes said. “Many people can name a missing white woman from recent years, but far fewer can name a missing Black woman or girl. That disparity impacts urgency, resources and outcomes.”

Flanagan echoed that urgency, warning against a mindset that pits communities against one another in competition for attention and resources.

“We cannot fall into the trap of scarcity… that colonial mindset that tells us there is not enough care, not enough justice, not enough attention for all of our communities,” she said. “That mindset divides us and weakens us.”

For Amarie’s family, the disparity in media coverage has been painfully personal. Kilgore said that as other high-profile cases captured public attention in the months after Amarie’s death, their efforts to keep her name visible became even harder.

“It just kind of took away from Amarie’s case,” Kilgore said.

The family has had to do much of the legwork themselves: writing letters, contacting representatives, organizing a vigil, pushing for a reward. The office helped support the vigil and contributed to the reward fund, and staff attended Monday’s event alongside the family.

“There’s no other nonprofit group that even supported us the way they have,” Yang said. “They are doing a really good job.”

But both women are clear that more is needed, not just from the office, but from the broader community and from law enforcement. Robbinsdale Police, they said, are a small department unaccustomed to homicide investigations. In the first two months after Amarie’s death, Kilgore said, no witnesses were questioned.

“They didn’t even question nobody in the first two months,” Kilgore said. “That was very disappointing.”

Kilgore also called for more community resources like programs, mental health support and pathways for families who have no road map for what they are going through.

“Nobody wakes up like, ‘I don’t think my kid’s gonna get murdered today,'” Kilgore said. “You don’t have a road map to that. But what are some things and precautions and procedures for people that experience this?”

Flanagan spoke directly to those families from the Capitol steps, pushing back against any framing that reduces victims to data points.

“You are not statistics,” she said. “You are daughters, you are sisters, you are mothers, you are aunties, you are cousins. You are children of God.”

Director Burkes stressed that the office is working to build an advisory board rooted in lived experience, made up of community members, survivors and victims’ families, to shape its direction going forward.

“What we’ve learned, time and time again, is that women and girls have been telling their stories for decades,” Burkes said. “The difference now is that someone is finally listening, and that must continue.”

As the Walz-Flanagan administration enters its final year, Flanagan was clear that the work must outlast any administration.

“This work did not begin in government. It began as a movement, and it will continue as a movement because of you,” she said. “My occupation might change, but my vocation is the same: to ensure that people are seen.”

She closed with a direct message to Burkes and the office’s future.

“I look forward to the day, Director Burkes, when you close this office because it’s no longer a problem,” Flanagan said. “Take up space. Continue to speak your truth, because this movement belongs to all of us.”

Yang and Kilgore said they are hoping Amarie’s story reaches someone who knows something.

“Keep putting her name out there so that she’s not forgotten,” Yang said. “She’s not a statistic. She’s not swept under a rug. We want justice.”

Anyone with information about Amarie Alowonle’s death is urged to contact the Robbinsdale Police Department at (763) 531-1220.

Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.