At its annual two-day conference this week, Montana’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Task Force gathered to take stock of its fragile progress — a slow reckoning shaped as much by grief as by policy.
“As far as personally fighting for justice, it’s not fun, it’s not glamorous,” task force member Cheryl Horn said. “But you have to stand there and still speak because she can’t.”
As the list of missing and murdered Indigenous people still grows in the state, many of those leading the advocacy efforts are the ones who first felt the loss — including Horn.
When Horn’s 16-year-old niece Selena Not Afraid went missing from a Hardin rest area on Jan. 1, 2020, Horn worked alongside Not Afraid’s mother to lead a 20-day boots-on-the-ground search and social media outreach campaign before the teen’s body was found.
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By the time Not Afraid went missing, Horn’s family was no stranger to tragedy. Not Afraid’s sister, Tristen Grey, was killed in a hit-and-run in Billings in 2018 at age 22 and her brother, Preston Bell, was shot 17 times by Billings police in 2018 at age 24 after he charged officers in a pickup. Not Afraid’s twin sister, Zoey, died by suicide in 2014.
Horn’s story is not unusual among Indigenous families. Melissa Lonebear, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council who attended the task force meeting, said she has lost at least seven family members to untimely, often unresolved deaths. Most recently, 8-year-old Marquez Deputee Ontiveros, who was killed in an Oct. 29 drive-by shooting on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
“It’s common in our families, on our reservations,” Lonebear said.
Although Indigenous people make up just over 6% of Montana’s population, they account for roughly a quarter of the state’s active missing persons cases. They also represent 26% of Montana’s homicide victims, according to 2019-2020 data from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
For many, the losses that once left them powerless have instead pushed them into advocacy — transforming private grief into public action for their missing or murdered relatives and other families who find themselves in the same situation.
“It was normal in our lives for people to go missing and the lack of response,” task force member Danielle Matt said. “We are part of the solution. Sitting here today talking with each other, talking with the state, talking with the feds — we’re doing something to break those norms.”
Comprised of a representative from each Montana tribe, with only the Crow spot currently unfilled, as well as a representative from the Montana Attorney General’s Office, Department of Justice, Indian Health Services, and Haley Omeasoo of Ohkomi Forensics, the task force held its two-day conference at the Depot in Billings with presentations from various law enforcement agents.
Tensions remain
In accordance with House Bill 545, passed in May, the Montana MMIP Task Force will soon undergo structural changes. Starting July 1, the task force will transition to operating as an advisory board, providing formal recommendations to state, tribal and federal agencies, monitoring systemic gaps and helping guide policy decisions to improve coordination and response in MMIP cases.
Previously funded solely through state appropriations, the group will now, for the first time, be allowed to raise donations and seek outside funding to support its expanded work. This new funding model also comes with restrictions, which Anne Dormandy, Crime Information Bureau chief for the state’s Department of Criminal Investigations, presented during the Tuesday meeting.
The funds raised by the advisory board, Dormandy said, will be held in a special revenue account that can be used toward efforts to combat the MMIP crisis as a whole — such as search and rescue training, equipment and technology to aid search efforts and preventative community outreach campaigns. However, the funds cannot be used to support individual search or advocacy efforts, a limitation that frustrated some task force members.
“The purpose of this was to help families,” Horn said. “I don’t know where the purpose got lost to where now we can’t do what we sat here and talked about a year ago. We’re back to relying on nonprofits to fill gaps that we said we wanted to fill. So I’m kind of disappointed and I’m trying to talk myself into seeing all the positives.”
While echoing Horn’s frustrations, Matt emphasized that the new model remains workable and suggested creating a shared Google Doc for tribes to organize and share resources.
“We can lean on each other,” Matt said. “We all have resources so let’s use them together.”
Voicing frustration with the bureaucratic roadblocks that come with systemic change, attendee Diana Burd, who has worked alongside the family of missing Blackfeet girl Arden Pepion to coordinate search efforts for years, emphasized the importance of direct communication between advocates, law enforcement, and MMIP families.
“Ask these families,” Burd said. “They know their own personal suffering.”
Jurisdictional issues have also been a long-held source of frustration for MMIP families. In Montana, whether any particular crime falls under the jurisdiction of federal, state, or tribal law enforcement depends on whether the victim and perpetrator are Indian or non-Indian — a system in which many MMIP families feel that their missing or murdered relatives have fallen through the cracks and their cases neglected by law enforcement.
It’s a frustration task force member Yolanda Fraser knows firsthand. Although the FBI typically handles serious crimes on reservations, the agency did not investigate after Fraser’s 18-year-old granddaughter, Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, was found dead in 2019 roughly half a mile from the Crow Reservation border. On their website, justiceforkaysera.org, her family disputes the jurisdictional decision, arguing that as a member of the Crow Tribe, Kaysera’s case should have been treated as a federal matter — and stating they remain unconvinced she was not killed within reservation boundaries.
“Policy minimizes our lives, the value of our lives,” Fraser said. “This jurisdictional policy is what matters (above) a person’s life.”
Matt also emphasized that jurisdictional complications in Indian Country have not only deprived MMIP families of justice, but have also allowed perpetrators to avoid accountability and continue victimizing others both on and off the reservation.
“We need to focus on this as an everybody issue and demand prosecution throughout Indian Country,” Matt said.
Laying New Groundwork
Also in accordance with House Bill 545, the MMIP advisory board will soon add a seat for a homicide investigator to serve in an advisory capacity — a role not previously included under the task force structure.
As it aims to fill that seat, the group is also currently hiring for a new coordinator after Justin Kambic, who previously filled that role, stepped down earlier this year to take a position with Montana’s Division of Criminal Investigation. Brian Frost, missing person specialist for the Montana Department of Justice and task force member, said there have been approximately 30 applicants for the position.
As its first fundraising initiative, the group plans to offer specialty MMIP awareness license plates, with proceeds from the additional fee directed to its special revenue account. Scott Roberts, CEO and founder of Unchained, an organization working to combat human trafficking in Montana, offered to donate half of the $4,500 fee to start the license plate initiative with Burd offering to cover the other half.
“We look for all missing and help with those cases, but we are really dialed in and focused on the missing and murdered Indigenous persons program,” Roberts said. “That’s what we focus on. We’re passionate about it, we work hard, we try to bring some tools and capability to those who are closest to the crisis.”
While the group organizes new fundraising initiatives, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes based on the Flathead Reservation have created its own MMIP fund as a mechanism to reach families quickly and directly.
“The nice thing about this fund is we don’t have to ask the state, we don’t have to ask the feds,” Matt said during a presentation on the topic. “We can manage this however we want.”
Adding that the tribe’s MMIP fund is fundraised via individual and business donations rather than the tribe’s general dollars, Matt urged other task force members to talk with their tribal councils and start their own funds of a similar nature if they are able.
The two-day conference ended with a presentation by Beth Richter, a new member of the four-person Human Trafficking Unit at the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation.
“The organization of these networks puts the government to shame,” Richter said in reference to human trafficking and smuggling networks. “They are so well organized.”
Stories of trafficking or suspected trafficking are also frequently told and experienced on reservations. Fraser recalled several instances in which her teenage granddaughters were followed by unfamiliar men in parking lots and outside gas stations.
“He might not be there to pull her into a van and take off with her,” Richter said in response to Fraser’s story. “But what he’s probably doing is watching her. He’s looking for indications of is she self-confident, is she not? Is she observant? Does she seem like someone he could victimize? He might, when he gets the opportunity, be like ‘You’re really beautiful, what’s your Snap?’ It’s as simple as that.”
Richter also said that law enforcement has seen a pattern of gangs and cartels coming to reservations to sell drugs and recruit members, adding that oftentimes sex and drug trafficking are intertwined.
Since the Human Trafficking Unit was established in Billings in 2019, the state has enacted several laws targeting pimps and buyers involved in commercial sex. With HB 112 signed into law on April 19, 2023, expanding criminal penalties, broadening the definition of trafficking, and adding new protections for victims, former Montana representative and current task force member Alan Doane said Montana now has some of the strongest anti-trafficking laws in the country.
“It’s going to take time to get there, it’s going to take education to get there but we’re headed in the right direction,” Doane said.
According to data from the Montana Department of Justice, Indigenous women account for 30% to 40% of the state’s human and sex trafficking victims. In 2023, the Human Trafficking Unit reported 147 cases — the highest number in a decade.
Progress may come in hard-won increments, but for MMIP families who have turned grief into advocacy, even slow change shows that their voices and stories are finally shaping the system.
