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Editor's note: This is the third installment of a three-part series on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the upper Plains.
Half a dozen Native and non-Native women alike sat around a table in the lobby of the Plains Art Museum for their monthly meeting on missing and murdered Indigenous people, or MMIP. Their group was formed shortly after a local Native American woman, Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, was brutally murdered in August 2017. The members of the group, known as the Fargo Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force, have a shared trauma, said Ruth Buffalo, a member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation and a Democratic state representative for Fargo.
They all joined in the search for LaFontaine-Greywind, whose body was found by kayakers along the Red River nine days after she disappeared. The river, which runs from southern North Dakota into Canada, has been the dumping site of hundreds of Indigenous people's bodies over the years, according to the Sovereign Bodies Institute, a group working to document such cases in North America.
LaFontaine-Greywind was murdered, and her baby was cut from her womb. The child survived despite the violent ordeal. And the case sparked international outcry and even a bill in Congress that has yet to pass.
After LaFontaine-Greywind's death, Buffalo helped form the local task force and a handful of women joined in the effort. Now, they help out with the annual MMIP March on Feb. 14, an event started locally by the awareness group Sing Our Rivers Red. They use their Facebook page to provide resources and raise awareness when people go missing. They set up booths at local events, and they organize viewings of relevant documentaries and artwork.
"We have to be more proactive," Buffalo said. "And oftentimes, it takes a horrific thing for people to take action."
They're not the only ones taking action, though. Grassroots movements are popping up across the Plains in the form of organizations, civilian search crews, and awareness walks and rallies.
One local artist created a piece to start conversations about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. One group of activists walked 550 miles along the Red River...
