Myrna Dumontiere and Arleen Ray Adams are sisters, and members of the Bitterroot Salish tribe in Arlee, Montana. When they were young, their grandmother was set on fire, violently murdered and left for dead in a public alley in 1959. Despite obvious signs of it being a homicide, the coroner ruled her cause of death as hypothermia. A police investigation was never opened no matter how much they begged authorities. Besides memories and keepsakes, a one-line obituary in the town’s weekly newspaper is the only tangible evidence of their grandmother’s existence. The sisters still live on the land that has been in their family for generations, and they said it connects them to their grandmother, whose life-long passion was horse riding.
Dumontiere and Adams are not alone. The story of their grandma’s murder, the deep-seeded pain and lack of justice, are a horrifically familiar experience for thousands of indigenous women.
While Native Americans make up only 6.7% of Montana’s population, they account for 26% of missing persons reports. The epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women is far- reaching, affecting indigenous communities, particularly on reservations, across the U.S. and North America.