State fires director of Minnesota’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office
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The director of Minnesota’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office, Guadalupe Lopez, has been terminated less than a year after being appointed to the position.
Lopez told MPR News on Thursday morning that she was “shocked” by the move, which happened the previous day. Her departure from the state office on Wednesday came just one day after she took part in a ceremony marking National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Day.
State officials confirmed Lopez’s departure but said they could not comment on the reason for it.
Lopez said she was told she had “made some poor leadership decisions.” But she told MPR that she did not think her leadership style and advocacy worked well within state government.
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“I think that it is hard for an Indigenous person to be in state systems. The cultural competency definitely wasn’t there,” she said.
“It doesn’t give leeway for humanness,” Lopez said of her experience within state government. “Not everything is going to be cookie-cutter.”
Lopez started in the role last summer after serving four years as the executive director of Violence Free Minnesota and with years of prior work in the field. She is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.
The MMIR office was established in 2021 to address disproportionate rates of violence and missing-persons cases affecting Minnesota’s Indigenous communities.
In a news release announcing her appointment, state officials had called Lopez a “nationally respected advocate and coalition-builder with deep ties to Minnesota’s Indigenous communities.”
“I have no doubt she will lead with the same clarity, compassion and strength that have defined her career,” state Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson said in that August 2025 news release.
“Director Lopez leads from the heart. She doesn’t just understand MMIR, she feels its impact deeply,” Department of Public Safety Tribal Relations Director Juliet Rudie said in the same news release. “This office was established to challenge the big picture and Guadalupe is exactly the leader we need right know to change outcomes for our relatives.”
But Lopez said Thursday that in the state role, she felt like she was being asked to navigate a rulebook she was never given.
“I know my work ... like the back of my hand, the understanding of missing and murdered, of sex trafficking, of domestic and sexual violence — but what I didn’t understand was how to do that in the state,” she told MPR. “And that’s, I think, what was my downfall, is not how to play nice within (the) state, or do it appropriately, or be the yes person. That’s my opinion.”
When asked if she thought — as the third person to helm the office since its 2021 inception —that the position was set up for success, Lopez said, “I can’t speak for the other people, but I will speak for myself. And no. No, it wasn’t.”
In a statement on Lopez’s departure, Jacobson — the DPS commissioner — said that “our dedication to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office continues, as does our commitment to the Indigenous community.”
Jacobson said Office of Justice Programs Executive Director Kim Babine will lead the MMIR Office on an interim basis, with support from Rudie, who is a former MMIR Office director.
