When a 25-year-old First Nations man went missing, a lack of urgency from the police meant his family was forced to conduct its own inquiries and searches. Now, alongside a team of experts, his sister has co-founded the 'disappeared project', an Indigenous-led organisation to help families in similar situations.
00:00Every week Jai Gray would visit his dad to mow the lawn and eat a bacon and egg toasty.
00:07But one day he didn't turn up.
00:10We were worried because Jai was a very vulnerable person.
00:15Jai's family reported him missing, but his sister says days later police still hadn't conducted a welfare check or even issued a missing persons alert.
00:26It was at that point I realised we had to do something, that it was up to us to make things happen.
00:34So I drove to the house and asked the questions myself.
00:39The 25 year old's body was found in an abandoned quarry in the Glasshouse Mountains last June.
00:45Police now suspect he was murdered.
00:48Jai was missing for like 10 days for me and it was the worst 10 days of my life.
00:53I can't imagine families who are 20 years missing.
00:58Ginny believes cases of missing First Nations people do not receive the attention they deserve.
01:04It's prompting her to set up the disappeared project.
01:07We realised that there was such an urgent need for an organisation who was able to help,
01:14not just provide families with resources and help in every way, but to validate their concerns.
01:20The Indigenous led team of experts will research the patterns in cases and say it'll challenge police assumptions.
01:27Often we see language like walkabout, like drug addiction, like they'll just go away and they'll come back.
01:34And I think there are a lot of cases that we don't even know about.
01:37Police deny that they treat Indigenous people differently when it comes to missing persons cases.
01:42They say that they take all reports seriously.
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