MMIP event combined with Rocky Boy Sobriety Walk

Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation will be host to a trio of events Friday including a traditional powwow and the tribe’s annual sobriety walk which will double as a walk to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous people this year.

Registration for the walk will begin at 8:30 a.m. and begin in earnest at 9 at the Old Stone Child College parking lot and end at Rocky Boy Powwow Grounds. Lunch will be provided.

The sobriety walk has been an annual event at Rocky Boy for decades, but this year it is being held in conjunction with a walk to raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cause, an event spearheaded by Duane Garvais Lawrence that travels around the U.S. in an effort to raise money and give a voice to those affected by the issue.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Native Americans account for more than 25 percent of the missing person cases in the state of Montana despite being less than 7 percent of the population.

Native Americans, especially Native American women, go missing at extremely high rates compared to people of any other races or ethnicities in the U.S. and Canada and face staggeringly high rates of homicide, abuse and sexual violence, many times that of white women.

This disproportionate rate of violence has been attributed to a number of issues, including the historical legal inability of tribes to prosecute on their own reservations when the perpetrator is non-Native, confusion regarding jurisdiction between tribal, state and federal law enforcement, and a lack of resources on the part of tribal police departments, as well as the general economic and social marginalization of Native Americans.

Accurate statistics on missing person cases can be difficult to obtain due to the before-mentioned lack of resources of tribal police departments, as well as frequent errors by non-native police departments, misclassifying Native Americans as another race.

Lawrence, as well as being an ex-U.S. Marine, was in law enforcement for 25 years and until a few years ago had no idea just how bad the problem was.

He said he was the assistant chief of police for a tribe on the west coast when the tribe’s chairman, a friend of his, gave him a copy of Savanna’s Act, a bill in Congress proposed to address the issue, and asked him to look into what he could do about the issue.

“He knows me pretty well and knew I’d do something about it,” he said.

He said as he read the act, passed by Congress last year, and the research behind it he was stunned and sickened by how bad things were, and, as a father of five daughters and a few granddaughters, he knew he had to do something.

”I remember that day, I went outside and I went through a range of emotions going from mad to disbelief, to crying a little bit and then getting mad again,” he said.

Lawrence said, as a law enforcement officer, he believes very strongly that people in his profession need to live up to their oath to protect and serve, but sometimes, especially when it comes to Native Americans who go missing, it’s an oath that isn’t always lived up to.

Lissa Kicking Woman of the Blackfeet Nation said when her niece, Ashley HeavyRunner-Loring, went missing in June of 2017, law enforcement didn’t take the situation seriously and at first said she was probably off partying with her friends.

“We just got no help,” Kicking Woman said.

She said after going through the process of requesting help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation they were able to, after nine months, gain the help of one agent, one dog, and one helicopter.

Until they finally got those resources it was just her and four others trying to search the 1.5 million acres of the reservation on foot.

She said this sluggishness just isn’t seen when non-Native people go missing, citing an incident nearby but outside the reservation of a young white woman who faked her own disappearance in the Glacier area.

Kicking Woman said that incident almost immediately gathered hundreds of people searching including members of their tribal police department, nine dogs, five helicopters, and far more substantial assistance from the FBI.

She said her reservation has three people still missing. Her niece is one, her nephew Leo Wagner is another, and the last is an infant who she has been trying to help find as well.

She said even getting the word out about newly missing people is difficult because tribes often don’t have necessary infrastructure for things like amber alerts.

Kicking Woman said these disappearances profoundly affect her and the community, and inspire a great deal of fear in the people of the Blackfeet Nation.

She said her experience made her want to help others who go through the same thing, and she’s been an MMIP Awareness advocate ever since, carrying on the work of her niece, herself an awareness advocate.

Kicking Woman said her niece wrote a series of essays about the issue in her capacity as a student, all three of which won awards and praise from her instructors and peers and one year later she went missing herself.

She said her niece’s disappearance and the subsequent attention garnered by the incident has changed things for the better in the Blackfeet Nation at least with regards to how law enforcement responds to missing people cases, but there is much to be done before this issue goes away.

Lawrence said the response that so many Native people get when bringing these incidents to the police, that their loved one is probably fine, that they’re just out partying, that the incident isn’t suspicious and they shouldn’t worry, is completely unacceptable.

“You’re not a judge, you’re not a jury, your duty is to protect and serve the people,” he said.

He said even if it is an instance of someone partying and not checking in, officers need to take every incident seriously, and get the ball rolling on finding people immediately.

Origins of the MMIP Walk

Lawrence said after getting some downtime from his job in law enforcement he considered running across America to raise awareness for the issue, but made a slight alteration to the plan after praying on it.

”I’m 55 years old so Creator God said, ‘You might want to bike across America,’” he said. ”That was a good idea.”

He said he has been helping Earth-Feather Sovereign, a well known MMIP awareness advocate out of Seattle, and set up a GoFundMe for her efforts before setting out.

Lawrence said he traveled the country trying to give as many people as possible a chance to tell their stories and show them that there are people out there who care.

He said he ended up at Plymouth Rock at the 400 year anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower, and met with the decedents of the host tribe, and discussed the historical trauma and cultural erasure that echoes down through history resulting in the continued marginalization of Native Americans.

He said they spoke about the violence experienced by those who were forced into the residential school system in the U.S. and Canada, where Native Americans and First Nation people were subjected to horrific treatment at the hands of the system.

In the past few months mass unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children have been found at the sites of former residential schools in Canada, some of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church.

The system was part of a century-long campaign of forced assimilation which the Historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded was cultural genocide.

The residential school system was in place until 1996 and many people still living today feel the effects of that system.

Lawrence said the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People is ultimately another echo of this history of cultural erasure.

Even when people are found, he said, the compounded historical trauma can make coping with what happened to them difficult.

He said 42 percent of survivors have attempted or committed suicide, more than half lack permanent housing, and more than a third have report being driven to alcoholism by the incident.

Nearly all report being affected by historical trauma.

As for those left behind, Lawrence said, they are left with no resolution and cannot properly grieve their loved ones, and like the survivors, many are driven to alcoholism or drug use to cope.

“We’re in this destructive cycle,” he said.

After returning home from the journey, Lawrence said, tribes were already contacting him to see when he was coming back.

He also said he’s been in talks with a Canadian film company that is interested in making a documentary about the issue so awareness does seem to be increasing.

He said this time around he’s working more closely with the tribes he visits and he’s looking forward to his arrival at Rocky Boy Friday.

“We’re excited to be there,” he said.

Rocky Boy Wellness Coalition Chair Elinor Nault said when she heard about the event coming to Rocky Boy she suggested that they combine it with the sobriety walk, seeing crossover between the two issues.

Nault said Rocky Boy has been affected by MMIP profoundly, with two men still missing.

“Our community hasn’t had any closure, because we don’t know what happened to them,” she said.

She said Rocky Boy is also affected by the disproportionate rates of violence and murder, having lost many women to it over the years.

She said according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention murder is the third-leading cause of death for Native American women and more than 84 percent experience violence in their lifetimes.

Nault said more than half have experienced abuse at the hands of intimate partners and nearly as many have experienced sexual violence, far more than Anglo-American women.

She said due to poor record keeping and underreporting the issue is likely even worse than the numbers suggest, but even then they communicate the harrowing violence that Native American women and girls face.

Nault said the families of these people have been invited to speak at the event and she hopes it will be a way to remember people.

“People can’t just go missing and be forgotten,” she said.

She said the Chippewa Cree Business Committee has voiced support for the event and voted by resolution to have the event held in honor of Robbie Alexander and Smokey Roasting Stick and their families.

The Powwow

Nault said the walks will be followed by the Chippewa Cree Traditional Powwow, which will be at the Rocky Boy Powwow Grounds.

A community feed will be at 5 p.m., Drum Roll Call will be at 6:30, and Grand Entry will be at 7.

In order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 non-residents are prohibited from attending and People who do attend are encouraged to wear masks, social distance and be mindful of hand hygiene.

For more information, people can call Loni Talyor of the Chippewa Cree Business Committee at 406-399-3399.