Cold Cases of Missing Indigenous Women in Montana

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In a single county in Montana. You know, just in
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the first few months of twenty twenty, an eighteen year
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old girl named Selena not Afraid vanished, right, And according
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to the sources we're looking at today, when she disappeared,
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she was at least a twenty eighth Indigenous woman to
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go missing in that one specific.
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County in that year alone.
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Yes, in that year alone, twenty eight women one county,
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just a matter of months. And the crazy thing is
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the system designed to find them couldn't even agree on
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whether they were actually missing in the first.
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Place, which is just it's incredibly hard to wrap your
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head around.
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It really is. I mean, when you close your eyes
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and picture of Montana, it's almost impossible not to see
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a postcard, right You see those jagged, snowcapped peaks of
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the Rockies. Yeah, you know, impossibly wide blue.
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Skies, rivers that look like glass.
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Yeah, exactly. It's the American West at its most pristine.
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But today we are going deep into a reality that
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completely shatters that postcard image because hidden right there beneath
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that breath takeing scenery is this ongoing, devastating human rights crisis.
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Yeah, we're talking about the crisis of Missing and Murdered
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Indigenous Women or MMIW right in our own backyard.
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And our mission for this deep dive today is to
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pull back the layers of this crisis. We aren't just
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looking at statistics. We're getting to dig into the systemic failures,
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the uh, the absolute maze of legal jurisdictions, and the
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specific unresolved human stories that really demand national attention.
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Because this crisis requires us to look past surface level
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assumptions and analyze decades of historical and legal context. I mean,
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it is very easy to hear a tragic headline, see
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a brief news clip, and view a disappearance as just
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an isolated incident.
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Right, like a terrible one off thing exactly.
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But when you analyze the official state reports, the deeply
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researched documentaries, the news investigations, and the fierce advocacy work
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coming out of these communities, a terrifying pattern emergency.
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Yeah, it really does.
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You see a legal in his sctorical environment where Indigenous
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women can just vanish and the systems meant to protect
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them fundamentally mechanically fail to respond.
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Okay, let's unpack this because the sheer scale of the
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numbers we are dealing with here is staggering and frankly,
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it's infuriating. Let's start with the statistical reality, which we
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pulled from the Montana Department of Justice and some recent
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state analyses.
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Yeah, let's look at the numbers.
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So, Indigenous people make up roughly six point five to
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six point seven percent of Montana's entire population, yet they
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account for anywhere from twenty four to over twenty six
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percent of all missing persons reports in the.
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State, and in some localized analyzes that number spikes even higher.
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Wow.
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What that translates to on a practical daily level is
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that Native Americans in Montana are nearly three point nine
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times more likely to go missing than white residents.
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Three point nine times that is, I mean, that's almost
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four times.
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As likely, right, And within that demographic, women and girls
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comprise a significant majority of these reports. The disparity is
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so massive that it transcends any standard statistical anomaly. Definitely,
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But the raw data only tells a fraction of the
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story because the data collection itself is fundamentally broken.
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Oh, the data is a complete mess. I was reading
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through a twenty sixteen national report included in our sources,
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and it showed thousands of missing Indigenous women and girls
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had been entered into the National Crime Information Center the
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NCIC database.
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Yep, the federal database, right.
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But then when you look at NANIOS, the National Missing
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and Unidentified Person System, the number of Indigenous women entered
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there was drastically lower. We are talking about a chasm
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between the two systems, huge gap. So how does a
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discrepancy like that physically happen? Who was actually managing these databases?
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Well, what's fascinating here is how bureaucratic architecture can actually
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mask a crisis. To understand why this happens, we have
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to look at how these systems operate mechanically.
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Okay, break it down for me.
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So the NCIC is run by the FBI. It's an
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internal real time database used primarily by law enforcement. If
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a police officer pulls you over and runs your plates,
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they are pinging. The NCIC. Nom Use, on the other hand,
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is funded by the Department of Justice, but as a
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public facing database, it allows families, medical examiners, and the
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public to cross reference missing persons with unidentified remains.
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So they serve entirely different functions. One is like a
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closed loop for cops and the other is an investigative
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tool for the public in corners.
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Yes, exactly, and the gap between them exists for a
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few deeply ingrained reasons. First off, entry into namism is
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largely voluntary for local law enforcement agencies.
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Wait, really it's voluntary.
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Yeah, there is no universal federal mandate requiring a county
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sheriff in rural Montana to log a missing person into
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nom use after putting them into NCIC.
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That seems like a massive oversight.
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It is. And Second, there's a total lack of standardization
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regarding how a missing Indigenous person is classified. In many
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older systems, there wasn't even a dedicated racial category for
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Native Americans. No officers would manually categorize missing Indigenous women
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as Hispanic or white or just other. So even if
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a woman is in the system, her identity as an
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Indigenous person is erased.
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It's like a company keeping two separate sets of accounting books.
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One book shows a massive, catastrophic deficit and the other
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shows almost nothing, and somehow nobody in charge is auditing
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the difference.
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That's a really good way to put.
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It, But it goes beyond just bad bookkeeping. Right If
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law enforcement agencies don't even have a unified agreement on
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who is missing and how many people are missing, how
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can they possibly execute an effective search.
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The short answer is they can't. When data tracking is
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this poor, it effectively limits the allocation of resources. Federal brands,
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search and rescue funding specialized task forces. They are all
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deployed based on statistical need.
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Oh I see. So if the numbers look low, if.
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The official numbers are artificially deflated because of poor data entry,
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the funding never arrives. This isn't just an administrative error.
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The advocacy groups we researched argue it reflects a historical
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societal indifference. The system doesn't track what it doesn't value.
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Wow, which brings us right back to Big Horn County.
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Because Big Horn covers parts of the Northern Cheyenne and
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Crow Reservations, and about sixty five percent of its residents
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identify as Native American right.
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And as we mentioned at the start, by early twenty twenty,
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when eighteen year old Selena not Afraid went missing, she
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was at least the twenty eighth missing Indigenous woman in
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that county that year alone, and.
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Big Horn County is a prime example of where the
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statistical failures collide with the geographic realities. You have a
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massive expanse of land, severely limited law enforcement personnel, and
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a population that is disproportionately affected by this crisis. When
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Selena Not Afraid disappeared, it highlighted not just the sheer
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volume of cases, but the immediate crushing bureaucratic wall that
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families hit the second they try to report a disappearance.
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We've established this bureaucratic black hole with the data, but
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what does that actually look like when the clock starts ticking,
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when those critical first forty eight hours are slipping away.
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It gets incredibly complicated.
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Because once a case is finally reported, the investigation immediately
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plunges into an absolute jurisdictional maze. Our sources outline this
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overlapping web of authorities on reservations. You've got tribal police,
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the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the FBI, and state and
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local law enforcement. I mean it sounds chaotic. It is
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worse than chaotic. It is paralyzing. And to understand the
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mechanics of this maze, we have to look at the
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legal framework. This isn't accidental. It is the direct result
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of centuries of federal Indian law. Okay, two pieces of
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legislation are critical here, the Major Crimes Act of eighteen
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eighty five and Public Law two eighty, which was passed
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in nineteen fifty three.
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I want to pause you right there, because throwing around
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names of nineteenth century laws can sound a bit abstract.
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How do laws from eighteen eighty five and nineteen fifty
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three physically dictate how a police officer responds to a
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missing person in twenty twenty six?
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Right, it seems disconnected, but it's not. The Major Crimes
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Act essentially stripped tribal courts of the authority to prosecute
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serious felonies like murder or kidnapping committed on their own lands.
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Oh wow, Yeah, it handed that jurisdiction over to the
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federal government. So immediately if a major crime happens on
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a reservation, tribal police often have to wait for federal
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agencies like the FBI to take the lead, which takes
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time exactly. Then Public Law to eighty came along and
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complicated things further by transferring federal jurisdiction over crimes on
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reservations to state governments in certain specific states.
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And where does Montana fall in that?
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Montana is what's known as an optional pl to eighty state,
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meaning this jurisdiction is inconsistently applied depending on the specific
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tribe and past agreements.
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But the land itself isn't a solid block of tribal ownership, right.
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I read about this concept of the checkerboard, which makes
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my head spin.
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The checkerboard is the physical manifestation of this legal nightmare.
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In the late eighteen hundreds, the federal government passed the
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DAWs Act, also known as the General at An Act.
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The goal was forced assimilation. The government took communally owned
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tribal lands, broke them up into individual parcels, and sold
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off the surplus land to non native settlers. Fast forward
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to today, and a single Indian reservation is a literal
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checkerboard of land ownership.
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So which is completely fragmented.
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Completely. You have trust land owned by the tribe, fee
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land owned by non natives, and state highways cutting right
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through the middle of all of it.
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Let's ground this in a real scenario. Imagine you have
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a situation where a nine to one to one call
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comes in an assault or a kidnapping is actively happening.
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How does this checkerboard actually play out for the dispatcher
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and the responding officers.
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Let's walk through it. A nine to one one call
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comes in about an assault. Before an officer is even dispatch,
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the authorities have to determine three things O good worthy.
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One is the victim native or non native? Two is
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the suspected perpetrator native or non native? And three what
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are the exact GPS co co ordinates of the crime?
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You're kidding, no, Because if it's a Native victim and
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a Native suspect on tribal trust land, the tribal police
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might handle the initial response, but the FBI has to
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handle the felony prosecution. Right, But if it's a non
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native suspect and a Native victim on fee land within
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the reservation, the jurisdictional authority shifts entirely, often falling to
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county sheriffs or state police.
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Wait, hold on, you're saying, a nine to one to
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one dispatcher has to figure out the racial and tribal
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enrollment status of both a victim and an attacker, plus
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check a property deed while a crime is actively in progress.
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That is exactly what happens. The practical result is devastating.
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You have tribal police who are often chronically underfunded and understaffed.
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Arriving at a scene, they secure it, but then realize
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the suspect is non native.
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Or the crime occurred what ten feet off tribal land?
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Exactly ten feet off tribal land onto a state highway
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right of way. They now have no legal authority to
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make an arrest or collect certain types of evidence. They
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have to call the county sheriff or the FBI.
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While they're waiting for the FBI agent to drive three
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hours from the nearest field office. What happens to the
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crime scene?
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The scene degrades, witnesses leave, Crucial physical evidence is washed
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away in the rain or compromised. The critical first forty
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eight hours of a missing person's case are entirely consumed
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by jurisdictional handoffs.
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That's horrifying.
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It is the agencies are basically pointing fingers at each other,
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trying to determine who is legally obligated to foot the
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bill for the investigation.
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Our sources mentioned the twenty thirteen reauthorization of the Violence
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Against Women Act or VAO. Didn't that try to fix
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some of this?
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It patched a very specific hole. The twenty thirteen VAWO
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reauthorization recognized the inherent power of participating tribes to exercise
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criminal jurisdiction over certain non Indian perpetrators who commit domestic
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violence or dating violence against Native women on tribal lands.
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Okay, so that sounds like a good thing.
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It was a massive victory for tribal sovereignty without a doubt.
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But domestic violence implies a known suspect, right partner or
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an ex partner. What happens if an Indigenous woman is
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taken by a stranger or what if she simply vanishes
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without a trace, like so many of the cases we
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are looking at.
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In cases of stranger violence, or when a woman disappears
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without any initial evidence of who took her, that Valya
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provision does not apply. I see, the massive gaps remain,
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the jurisdictional lines become a tangled web that catches the
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victim's family rather than the perpetrator.
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So what does this all mean? Is this jurisdictional made
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essentially like a four way stop where every single driver
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keeps waving the other person on saying you know, no,
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you go know you have the right of way, and
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meanwhile a life is literally hanging in the balance.
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That's a very accurate analogy.
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Why hasn't a streamlined, overriding federal protocol simply wiped out
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this checkerboard to save lives?
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Well. Dismantling that checkerboard requires untangling centuries of federal Indian law,
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treaties and sovereignty disputes. It's not just a quick policy tweak.
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It requires a structural overhaul of how the United's state
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interacts with sovereign tribal.
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Nations, which is never simple.
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Never. Many advocates argue that the federal government is hesitant
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to broadly expand tribal jurisdiction because of deep seated political
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resistance and complex constitutional debates over due process for non
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natives and tribal courts.
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We can talk about laws and property deeds all day,
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but to truly understand the devastating human impact of these delays,
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we have to look at the specific women who have
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vanished within this system.
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We really do.
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Our sources outline several high profile cold cases that show
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exactly how the system breaks down, but in completely different ways.
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Let's trace the timeline of Jermaine Charlow. She also went
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by Liz or her surname Mora Joe. She is a
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twenty three year old mother of two and the Confederated
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is salisht in Kutonite tribes on the Flathead Reservation, Okay.
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She vanished in Missoula, which is a major urban center
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in Montana, on the night of June fifteenth into the
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early hours of June sixteenth, twenty eighteen.
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The details of Jermaine's disappearance are chilling, precisely because of
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how public her last known moments were. This was not
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a disappearance on a remote, isolated stretch of highway, No,
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none at all. She was out visiting bars in downtown
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Missoula with her ex boyfriend Michael de France and some
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other acquaintances. We actually have surveillance footage of her. Her
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last known images were captured on a camera in an
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alley behind a bar somewhere around midnight to one am.
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And from everything I read, the timeline after that alleyway
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footage gets incredibly murky. She was reportedly dropped off near
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a local grocery store called the Orange Street Food Farm
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and after that just nothing. She was never seen again.
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Yeah, she just vanished.
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The detail that immediately stood out for her family was
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her digital footprint. Her cell phone went completely silent, her
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social media presence, which her family noted was highly active,
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just abruptly stopped. That was the immediate red flag. People
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don't just turn off their entire digital life without warning.
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No, they don't. And in Jermaine's case, we see a
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totally different investigative response than what happens on the rural reservations.
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Because she vanished in Missoula urban center, there were no
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initial jurisdictional squabbles between tribal police.
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And the FBI, right because it was in the city exactly.
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Detective Guy Baker of the Missoula Police Department led a massive, centralized,
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multi agency effort.
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The scale of the search was huge. We're talking the FBI,
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a nonprofit called the Lifeguard group that fights human trafficking,
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kadraverdogs searching vast tracts of land, executed search warrants, and
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hundreds upon hundreds of hours of investigation.
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And there were intense specific areas of focus. The ex boyfriend,
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Michael de France, who was with her that night, had
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a prior assault conviction involving Germaine.
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Oh really yes.
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During the course of the investigation into her disappearance, federal
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authorities actually pursued charges against him. He faced federal firearms charges,
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specifically possessing firearms while being subject to a domestic violence
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order of protection.
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But it's crucial to note that those firearms charges were
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later overturned on appeal, and more importantly, despite his criminal
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history in being one of the last people to see her,
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he was never officially named a suspect and a disappearance.
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That is the agonizing reality of the legal threshold. Knowing
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someone's history is not the same as having physical evidence
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tying them to a disappearance. Right despite the multi agency push,
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the search warrants, and the massive media attention from national
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shows like forty eight Hours Cold Justice and the incredible
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investigative work by journalist Connie Walker on her podcast Stolen,
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Jermaine Charlow is still missing.
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It's heartbreaking.
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As of our twenty twenty six sources, nobody has ever
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been found. Her aunt, Melenda Morjeaux, and her family are
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still running billboards along the highways, still organizing weekly searches.
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I have to admit my total confusion here. How is
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it possible in the modern era of ubiquitous cell phone tracking,
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GPS data, and surveillance cameras like the literal camera in
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that Misilla alleyway that a multi agency effort with hundreds
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of hours invested yields absolutely zero answers.
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It speaks to the extreme limitations of technology. When human
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variables in geography are involve cameras have blind spots in
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an urban alleyway, you might catch someone walking past but
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not getting into a vehicle just offscreen.
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That makes sense.
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Cell phones can be destroyed, powered down, or thrown into
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a river, which instantly severs the digital trail. If a
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crime is committed by someone who is aware of these
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tracking methods, or if the victim is taken out of
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an urban center into the vast, unmonitored expanse of Montana's wilderness.
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Which is what millions of acres of dense forest.
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And deep ravine, exactly millions of acres, the technological advantage
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vanishes in an instant. The physical landscape of Montana itself
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becomes an accomplice to concealment.
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Wow. If we contrast Germaine's urban disappearance with the case
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of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner, you see the exact inverse
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of the investigative response, but with the same tragic outcome.
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Yeah, let's talk about Ashley.
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Ashley was a twenty year old member of the Blackfeet
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Nation who vanished in June twenty seventeen. But she disappeared
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from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Browning after a party.
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There's a video of her from that night.
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Ashley's case was swallowed whole by that reservation jurisdictional checkerboard
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we just dissected. Unlike Jermayne's case in Missoula, where Detective
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Baker was able to immediately mobilize a centralized urban task force,
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Ashley's family hit the bureaucratic wall.
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Her sister caredily had to practically become a lead detective.
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The family was out there conducting searches on horseback, traversing
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rugged terrain because of profound frustrations with the delayed and
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disjointed law enforcement response.
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The tribal police had limited resources to begin.
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With, right and the FBI eventually joined in and listed
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her disappearance as a kidnapping, but progress had already stalled.
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The critical early window was gone.
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The contrast is stark. Jermayne's case shows a situation with
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a sheer lack of physical evidence despite massive immediate urban resources.
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Ashley's case shows a disappearance deeply hindered by rural jurisdictional complexities,
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delayed response times, and the physical vastness of the reservation.
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And yet yet both lead to the exact same tragic result,
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a cold case.
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And the emotional toll on the families is unbearable. The
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sources detail how Ashley's family actually ended up relocating. They
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had to leave their home simply because the unresolved pain
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of living there driving past the spots where she might
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have been taken was just too much. It's a constant,
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enduring hope that is perpetually at war with complete devastation.
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If we connect this to the bigger picture. While Jermaine
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and Ashley are completely missing without a trace, there is
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another side to this crisis. Sometimes these cases do end
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in the discovery of a body, but the answers provided
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by the authorities leave the families feeling completely betrayed.
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And this brings us to the Big Horn County cluster.
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We touched on Selena Not Afraid earlier, but the situation
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in Bighorn County is profoundly disturbing on a systemic level.
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It was brought to national attention by the twenty twenty
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three Showtime documentary Murder and Bighorn. Yes. The documentary exposed
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a very specific, terrifying pattern regarding young Indigenous girls dying
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under with the community views as highly suspicious circumstances.
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The pattern is undeniable. When you look at the case files.
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You have young girls disappearing almost always after a social
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gathering or a party. Weeks or months later, their bodies
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are discovered in remote, outdoor areas, and then there's an
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immediate rush by local law enforcement and coroners to rule
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the causes of death as exposure or hypothermia.
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Let's talk about Hanny Scott. She was only fourteen years old.
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In late December twenty eighteen, she went missing after a
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house party in Lame Deer, which is on the Northern
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Cheyenne Reservation. Weeks later, her body was found. The official
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cause of death ruled by the authorities was hypothermia. Okay,
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but her family, the actual people looking directly at her
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body at the funeral home, reported seeing clear signs of trauma.
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They saw bruises, they saw a broken nose. They noted
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that she was wearing mismatched clothing that didn't even belong
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to her.
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The tension here is between the strict clinical parameters used
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by medical examiners and the la lived reality of the families.
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A medical examiner might find that the ultimate physiological mechanism
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of death was the body shutting down due to extreme cold.
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Therefore they checked the box for hypothermia.
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But that completely ignores the context.
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Exactly how did a fourteen year old girl end up
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alone in freezing temperatures with a broken nose and someone
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else's clothes. The medical ruling of hypothermia is often used
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by lawn raizement to close the case as accidental completely
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bypassing the investigation into the assault or abduction that put
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her in the snow in the first place.
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It's like taking your car to a mechanic because it's
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making a horrible grinding noise, and the mechanic just unplugs
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the check engine light and says it's fixed. They're wilfully
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ignoring the obvious signs of trauma just to close the ticket.
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That's a great analogy.
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How can a community possibly begin to heal when the
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official legal record outright contradicts the physical, battered state of
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their children's bodies.
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They cannot heal. What happens instead is the total fracturing
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of trust. Case was followed by the disappearance of eighteen
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year old Selena Not Afraid, who vanished on New Year's
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Day twenty twenty under remarkably similar.
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Circumstances after a party right.
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Yes disappeared After a party body found weeks later in
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an area that had supposedly already been searched, the investigation
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faced severe criticism from the community for extreme delays and
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a total lack of transparency. And then there is the
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case of Kaisera Stops Pretty Places, another young woman whose
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death in that same county remains under intense unresolved scrutiny.
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And the response from local authorities sometimes makes the situation
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even worse. The sources mentioned public officials, like a former
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under sheriff in the area, who publicly dismissed or outright
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denied that the m MIIW epidemic even exists. Advocacy groups
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described this as systemic gaslighting.
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It absolutely is.
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The state is essentially telling these families not to believe
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their own eyes.
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When an official denies the existence of the crisis, it
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sends a clear message to the community, we are not
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going to look for your children because we don't believe
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there is a problem. But to truly grasp why these
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young women are so vulnerable in the first place, whether
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they are at a house party, on the reservation or
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walking along a highway, we have to zoom out. We
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have to look at the deep generational root causes that
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set the stage for this exploitation.
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The sources are very clear that the MIIW crisis does
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not exist in a vacuum. You cannot separate today's statistics
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from the history of colonialism. We are talking about broken
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treaties that led to massive land loss and cultural disruption, and,
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perhaps most devastatingly, the trauma of the boarding school era.
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The boarding school policies were active into the mid twentieth century.
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Native children were forcibly removed from their homes by the
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government and placed in institutions designed to strip them of
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their language, culture, and familial bonds. Wow, the abuse in
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these schools was rampant. When you completely shatter the familial
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structure of an entire demographic for generations, it causes deep
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intergenerational trauma. Those children grew up without models of health parenting,
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carrying immense psychological pain, and.
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That historical trauma breeds modern southio economic vulnerability. We are
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looking at communities today dealing with staggeringly high unemployment rates.
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There are severe housing shortages, meaning multiple families are often
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crammed into small homes, which can exacerbate domestic tensions. There
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is systemic poverty, substance abuse issues, and critically a massive
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scarcity of mental health services on these reservations to help
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people cope with these compounded traumas.
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Furthermore, that systemic poverty creates highly specific physical dangers. Let's
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look at the geography of transportation. Many reservations lack basic infrastructure,
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including comprehensive public transportation. This means that many vulnerable Native
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women are forced to hitchhike simply to get from town
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to town, to visit family, or to get to work.
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Imagine you are a young woman, you have no car,
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no bus route exists, and you need to travel thirty
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miles for a job interview or a medical appointment. The
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option is to stand on the side of a major interstate.
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And predators know this. Our sources highlight how major corridors,
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specifically Highway I ninety, have become hunting grounds. Human trafficking rings,
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sex traffickers, and drug related criminal enterprises are rampant along
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00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:16.200
these interstate routes.
492
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:18.119
So they're targeting these specific highways.
493
00:25:18.319 --> 00:25:21.599
Yes, they use the highway system to move quickly across
494
00:25:21.599 --> 00:25:25.839
state lines, exploiting the jurisdictional checkerboards we discussed earlier. You
495
00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:29.960
have an intersection where intracommunity violence absolutely exists, fueled by
496
00:25:29.960 --> 00:25:32.839
substance abuse and poverty. But you also have a heavy
497
00:25:32.839 --> 00:25:37.279
influx of outside, non native perpetrators who are actively driving
498
00:25:37.319 --> 00:25:40.400
through these communities to exploit these vulnerabilities.
499
00:25:40.759 --> 00:25:44.079
The sources mentioned young women like Rayona Charlow, a teen
500
00:25:44.119 --> 00:25:47.319
who went missing in twenty eighteen, and Darlene Billy, whose
501
00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:50.839
remains were found years later. Their cases are tragic examples
502
00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:53.960
of how systemic risks like having no safe way to
503
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.440
travel trap young women in inherently dangerous situations.
504
00:25:57.599 --> 00:25:58.599
It's a terrible trap.
505
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:01.240
But there is another layer of stemic failure that happens
506
00:26:01.279 --> 00:26:04.759
after the disappearance, and that is the media and societal bias.
507
00:26:05.039 --> 00:26:07.200
We have to talk about missing white women syndrome.
508
00:26:07.359 --> 00:26:10.200
Missing white women syndrome was a term coined by journalist
509
00:26:10.319 --> 00:26:15.000
Gwen Ifil. It refers to the documented, statistically proven phenomenon
510
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:17.960
where missing person cases involving young, white, off and upper
511
00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:22.119
middle class women receive massive disproportionate around the clock national
512
00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:23.119
media coverage.
513
00:26:23.319 --> 00:26:26.519
Right, think of the intense viral frenzy surrounding cases like
514
00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:27.960
Gabby Patito exactly.
515
00:26:28.200 --> 00:26:32.200
Meanwhile, cases involving women of color, particularly indigenous women, are
516
00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:35.960
systematically underreported or ignored altogether by major news networks.
517
00:26:36.279 --> 00:26:38.599
Here's where it gets really interesting, though, and I want
518
00:26:38.599 --> 00:26:40.960
to push you on this. We live in an era
519
00:26:41.079 --> 00:26:46.559
where true crime completely dominates the podcast, television and documentary space.
520
00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:50.880
Millions of people consume these stories daily. Oh absolutely, Yet
521
00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:55.000
these mi MIIW cases were made vastly underreported. Is missing
522
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:58.400
White women syndrome just a media critique about viewing habits
523
00:26:58.799 --> 00:27:01.880
or does that sheer lack of cameras, reporters and national
524
00:27:01.920 --> 00:27:05.680
outrage actively give law enforcement permission to move slowly.
525
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:10.319
That is a profound observation, and the advocacy groups unequivocally
526
00:27:10.440 --> 00:27:13.279
argue that it is the latter. Media attention is the
527
00:27:13.279 --> 00:27:16.960
primary catalyst for resources. Really, yes, when a case is
528
00:27:17.079 --> 00:27:21.079
leading the national news every night, police chiefs, sheriffs and
529
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:25.440
politicians feel immense public pressure. They allocate emergency funding, They
530
00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:29.440
authorize unlimited overtime for detectives. They call in specialize federal
531
00:27:29.519 --> 00:27:33.680
resources and they hold daily press conferences because their professional
532
00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:36.880
reputations are on the line in front of the entire country.
533
00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:41.119
So when the media ignores a demographic, the subtle, unspoken
534
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:44.960
message sent to the institutions investigating those crimes is that
535
00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:48.000
society is not watching, and society just does not care.
536
00:27:48.279 --> 00:27:52.680
Exactly, the silence enables the apathy. It absolutely allows bureaucratic
537
00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:55.799
sluggishness to go unchecked. If a local sheriff knows that
538
00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:58.119
no reporter is going to call asking for an update
539
00:27:58.200 --> 00:28:01.319
on an Indigenous teenager's case, the file gets pushed to
540
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:02.279
the bottom of the pile.
541
00:28:02.759 --> 00:28:05.119
But the crucial turn in this story, and the reason
542
00:28:05.160 --> 00:28:07.079
we are talking about this today, is that while the
543
00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:09.279
media and the system may have turned a blind eye
544
00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:12.960
for decades, the indigenous communities themselves absolutely have not.
545
00:28:13.279 --> 00:28:14.000
No, they haven't.
546
00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:17.160
They have refused to be ignored. They are taking this immense,
547
00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:22.160
unbearable pain and fighting to turn it into actual legislative policy.
548
00:28:22.359 --> 00:28:26.039
The resilience of these communities is extraordinary. Let's look at
549
00:28:26.039 --> 00:28:28.359
the case of Hannah Harris. Hannah was a twenty one
550
00:28:28.440 --> 00:28:31.400
year old Northern Cheyenne mother who went missing from Lame
551
00:28:31.480 --> 00:28:36.319
Deer in July twenty thirteen. Tragically, her badly decomposed body
552
00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:39.319
was found days later near the local rodeo grounds.
553
00:28:39.359 --> 00:28:39.960
Just awful.
554
00:28:40.359 --> 00:28:44.279
Ultimately, two individuals, Gina Roland and Sidney Henderson Wata, were
555
00:28:44.279 --> 00:28:47.400
convicted of her murder. But Hannah's family did not stop
556
00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:48.440
at a criminal conviction.
557
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:51.759
No, they didn't. They channeled their grief into action. Her
558
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:56.400
case galvanized a massive wave of grassroots activism across Montana,
559
00:28:56.839 --> 00:28:58.920
and it resulted in the passing of a state law
560
00:28:59.039 --> 00:29:00.880
named in her honor, Hannah's Act.
561
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:04.359
Hannah's Act was a monumental step. It was specifically designed
562
00:29:04.359 --> 00:29:07.799
to improve law enforcement responses in those critical early hours.
563
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:10.799
The Act authorized the state's Department of Justice to employ
564
00:29:10.839 --> 00:29:14.279
a missing person specialist to work directly with local, state,
565
00:29:14.319 --> 00:29:15.920
and federal law enforcement.
566
00:29:15.640 --> 00:29:17.839
Which is exactly what they needed to handle the checkerboard
567
00:29:17.880 --> 00:29:18.759
issue right right.
568
00:29:19.240 --> 00:29:22.440
Crucially, this specialist acts as a liaison to help cut
569
00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:26.039
through that jurisdictional red tick we talked about. They forced
570
00:29:26.039 --> 00:29:29.680
the state government to change its legal infrastructure in her name, and.
571
00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:33.559
That advocacy spans generations. It's not just the recent cases.
572
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:36.880
Consider the case of Beverly D. D. Bryan. This is
573
00:29:36.920 --> 00:29:40.039
a cold case going back nearly fifty years to November
574
00:29:40.200 --> 00:29:43.960
nineteen seventy seven, Dede was a sixteen year old crow
575
00:29:44.039 --> 00:29:46.480
girl who went missing in Harden, Montana.
576
00:29:46.680 --> 00:29:48.119
Yeah, that's a tough one.
577
00:29:48.200 --> 00:29:51.160
Her body was discovered later at the county fairgrounds. And
578
00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:53.759
listen to this. The official cause of death was ruled
579
00:29:53.799 --> 00:29:58.039
as exposure, but her family noted Bruce's scratches and strongly
580
00:29:58.079 --> 00:29:59.599
suspected she'd been assaulted.
581
00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:01.799
It is. It's the exact same pattern we saw in
582
00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:04.920
Bighorn County forty years later, with Henny Scott and Selena
583
00:30:05.039 --> 00:30:08.119
not Afraid, the same rush to use environmental causes to
584
00:30:08.119 --> 00:30:12.000
close a complex investigation. But Didie's case hasn't been forgotten
585
00:30:12.119 --> 00:30:13.359
even after half a century.
586
00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:16.880
Her niece, Luella Bryan, who is a prominent Native journalist,
587
00:30:17.119 --> 00:30:20.640
has spent years fiercely advocating for her Anne's case, digging
588
00:30:20.720 --> 00:30:22.640
up old records and keeping the story alive.
589
00:30:23.039 --> 00:30:26.319
It is a prime example of the power of Indigenous journalism.
590
00:30:26.839 --> 00:30:29.799
Native voices are taking control of the narrative, using the
591
00:30:29.920 --> 00:30:34.599
tools of media to force accountability where the mainstream presses fail, and.
592
00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:37.920
It is working structurally. The sources detail the creation of
593
00:30:37.960 --> 00:30:41.079
the missing Indigenous Person's Task Force in Montana, which has
594
00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:44.519
led to major data tracking improvements and the implementation of
595
00:30:44.559 --> 00:30:45.599
better alert systems.
596
00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:48.359
We are seeing the rise of powerful grassroots groups too,
597
00:30:48.519 --> 00:30:51.759
like Montana Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women DASH, MONTANAMU dot
598
00:30:51.759 --> 00:30:54.680
Com DASH, organizing searches and supporting families.
599
00:30:54.880 --> 00:30:57.839
And on a federal level, we're seeing initiatives like the
600
00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:00.799
Missing and Murdered Unit established by the Department of Justice
601
00:31:00.799 --> 00:31:03.920
and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, alongside new efforts to
602
00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:08.680
utilize advanced DNA and specialize forensic teams to review cold cases.
603
00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:10.519
There is a quote from one of the advocates in
604
00:31:10.559 --> 00:31:13.079
the source material that really stuck with me. They said,
605
00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:16.559
these cases are our relatives. Well, that quote represents a
606
00:31:16.599 --> 00:31:20.200
massive paradigm shift. For decades, the legal system treated these
607
00:31:20.240 --> 00:31:24.440
women as statistics or jurisdictional headaches, or file numbers, languishing
608
00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:27.839
and mismatched databases. When the community stands up and says
609
00:31:28.079 --> 00:31:32.079
these are our relatives, they're forcibly reclaiming the humanity of
610
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:32.680
the victims.
611
00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:33.680
It changes everything.
612
00:31:33.799 --> 00:31:36.400
It shifts the entire goal of law enforcement from simply
613
00:31:36.559 --> 00:31:40.640
managing crime rates to bringing family home. It demands profound
614
00:31:40.759 --> 00:31:43.839
empathy from a system built on cold bureaucracy.
615
00:31:44.119 --> 00:31:47.599
But again, I have to ask if grassroots movements and
616
00:31:47.640 --> 00:31:50.200
grieving families are the ones having to do the heavy lifting,
617
00:31:50.519 --> 00:31:52.880
If they are the ones out on horseback organizing the
618
00:31:52.880 --> 00:31:56.160
search parties, funding the highway billboards out of their own pockets,
619
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:58.680
and acting as full time lobbyists to pass laws like
620
00:31:58.720 --> 00:32:01.920
Hannah's Act, at what point does the federal government step
621
00:32:02.039 --> 00:32:05.400
up and fully comprehensively standardize this process.
622
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:08.160
This raises an important question, and it is the exact
623
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:10.880
question advocates are yelling in the halls of Congress right now.
624
00:32:11.319 --> 00:32:14.759
The reliance on family advocacy is in itself a symptom
625
00:32:14.799 --> 00:32:15.920
of systemic failure.
626
00:32:16.160 --> 00:32:19.240
Right Why should a mother whose daughter is missing have
627
00:32:19.319 --> 00:32:22.920
to become an expert in constitutional law and media relations
628
00:32:23.279 --> 00:32:25.880
just to get the police to do their jobs exactly?
629
00:32:26.319 --> 00:32:28.720
While the new federal task forces and the Missing and
630
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:31.519
Murdered Units are steps in the right direction, they are
631
00:32:31.559 --> 00:32:36.319
often still critically underfunded and inconsistently implemented across different regions.
632
00:32:36.599 --> 00:32:39.759
So what does true federal standardization actually look like?
633
00:32:40.200 --> 00:32:45.119
True standardization would require overriding that jurisdictional checkerboard. We discussed.
634
00:32:45.640 --> 00:32:50.400
It would mean mandating unified, compulsory data collection across all
635
00:32:50.440 --> 00:32:54.680
fifty states, forcing every local sheriff to upload every missing
636
00:32:54.720 --> 00:32:58.599
Indigenous person into both NCIC and nemes simultaneously.
637
00:32:58.720 --> 00:32:59.640
That would be a game changer.
638
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:03.000
It would also mean tying federal law enforcement funding to
639
00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:07.039
strict immediate compliance with m MIIW search protocols until the
640
00:33:07.039 --> 00:33:09.839
breeden of investigation is entirely lifted off the shoulders of
641
00:33:09.839 --> 00:33:12.279
the grieving families, the system is still failing.
642
00:33:12.519 --> 00:33:15.359
We've covered an immense amount of ground today. We started
643
00:33:15.359 --> 00:33:18.400
by looking at the sheer staggering reality of the data,
644
00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:22.359
how Indigenous people make up barely seven percent of Montana
645
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:26.079
but a quarter of its missing persons. We waded through
646
00:33:26.119 --> 00:33:29.839
the absolute nightmare of the jurisdictional checkerboard, understanding how a
647
00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:32.480
law from eighteen eighty five can stop a search party.
648
00:33:32.519 --> 00:33:33.640
In twenty twenty.
649
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:35.079
Six, we really unpacked a lot.
650
00:33:35.160 --> 00:33:38.160
We looked at the historic systemic roots of poverty, the
651
00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:41.279
dangers of Highway I ninety, and the devastating bias of
652
00:33:41.319 --> 00:33:42.599
missing White woman syndrome.
653
00:33:43.079 --> 00:33:47.759
And most importantly, we learned the names Jermaine Charlow, Ashley Loring,
654
00:33:47.799 --> 00:33:52.759
Heavy Runner, Henny Scott Selena not Afraid Kaizera stops pretty places.
655
00:33:53.319 --> 00:33:55.039
Hannah Harris, DeeDee Bryant.
656
00:33:55.119 --> 00:33:56.680
Yes, their stories are so important.
657
00:33:56.799 --> 00:34:00.000
Their stories highlight both the profound failures of the institute
658
00:34:00.039 --> 00:34:04.240
Uians meant to protect them and the incredible, unbreakable resilience
659
00:34:04.240 --> 00:34:06.079
of the indigenous communities fighting for them.
660
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:08.440
To you listening right now, whether you live in Big
661
00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:10.880
Sky Country or thousands of miles away on the other
662
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:13.679
side of the world, this is not just a Montana issue.
663
00:34:13.679 --> 00:34:16.280
This is a nationwide failure of justice that demands our
664
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:19.880
collective awareness. The silence is what allows us to continue.
665
00:34:20.079 --> 00:34:23.119
Very well said, cases like these are evolving constantly. We
666
00:34:23.239 --> 00:34:25.679
encourage you to look at the official databases as of
667
00:34:25.719 --> 00:34:28.760
this year twenty twenty six to see the latest updates,
668
00:34:29.079 --> 00:34:32.280
support the Native led journalism covering these cases, and keep
669
00:34:32.280 --> 00:34:34.159
these names in the public consciousness.
670
00:34:34.599 --> 00:34:36.239
As we close today, I want to leave you with
671
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:39.000
a thought that goes back to where we started. Montana
672
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:43.119
is celebrated worldwide for its untouched, pristine land. It is
673
00:34:43.159 --> 00:34:46.199
a symbol of American freedom. Yeah, but if that very
674
00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:49.960
land holds the undiscovered secrets of so many vanished women,
675
00:34:50.239 --> 00:34:53.199
how do we reconcile our enjoyment of the American West's
676
00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:57.159
natural beauty with the unresolved trauma that is literally buried
677
00:34:57.159 --> 00:34:59.639
beneath it. Next time you look at a postcard of
678
00:34:59.639 --> 00:35:02.159
big sc guy country, ask yourself who is missing from
679
00:35:02.199 --> 00:35:02.599
the picture,