He Was Never Reported Missing: Now he's helping NCMEC protect native children
When Dr. Aaron Payment, a leader with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, travels to Tribal Nations on behalf of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), he carries a simple but urgent message: help is available, and reporting missing native children can save lives.
Payment is NCMEC’s Tribal Nation Fellow, sharing our free resources with tribal communities across the country and a message of hope.
The issue is very personal to Payment.
When he was 15, Payment says he was effectively abandoned and left to survive on his own. His family never reported him missing.
“I’m grateful I was not exploited, especially given the disproportionately high rates of trafficking and sexual exploitation faced by native children,” he said.
A high school dropout, Payment lied about his age at 16 to successfully pass his GED. Remarkably, he went on to receive a bachelor’s degree, three master’s degrees and a doctorate.
Today as a tribal fellow, Payment is helping Tribal Nations strengthen child protection efforts through Tribal Community Response Plans, which are coordinated strategies to prepare for and respond to cases of missing and exploited children.
He’s also improving communication between agencies and confronting the complex jurisdictional challenges that often arise when Native children disappear.
"The Tribal Fellowship serves as a critical bridge between NCMEC and Tribal communities,” said John Bischoff, who oversees our Missing Children Division. “Dr. Payment has helped us build a more coordinated, culturally responsive approach to serving Native communities.”
Even for Dr. Payment — a longtime elected tribal leader in Michigan — breaking through intergenerational mistrust from decades of federal Indian policy can be difficult. Yet he eagerly accepted the Tribal Nation fellowship to help native families protect their children and access free resources that could save lives.
Beginning in the mid-1800s and continuing until 1984, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to government-backed boarding schools designed to erase their native identity, Payment said.
Carlisle Indian School student body around 1885, with the superintendent’s house in background. (Credit: J.N. Choate, photographer, & Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, 1880-1889)
Native children were stripped of their language, culture and traditions. Many endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse, Payment said. Thousands died from disease, neglect and mistreatment. While President Biden issued a national apology in 2024, the pain of that era, finally under federal investigation in recent years, reverberates across tribal communities today.
Now in his second year, Payment is making significant progress despite longstanding and systemic barriers. There are 575 federally recognized tribes in the United States, yet about 80 percent of native people do not live on reservations where tribal resources are concentrated.
Map of federally recognized Indian tribes (Credit: Bureau of Indian Affairs); Dr. Aaron Payment (Credit: Aaron Payment)
One of the greatest challenges is encouraging tribes, social service agencies and individuals to report missing native children in the first place.
“Dr. Payment has been instrumental in advancing NCMEC's work with Tribal communities,” Bischoff said. “His leadership, expertise and longstanding relationships have helped expand Tribal representation throughout NCMEC programs.”
Dr. Payment can be reached at: aapayment@ncmec.org or tribalfellow@ncmec.org or by calling 906-440-8946.
Photo of Dr. Payment at NCMEC headquarters (Credit: Sarah Baker, NCMEC)