Hope for missing indigenous women and girls
crisis
Passed during the 2019 Legislative Session, House Bill 21—named Hanna’s Act after Hanna Harris who was killed in 2013 on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation—created a missing persons specialist position in the state’s Department of Justice.
This specialist will be tasked with investigating cases that occur
outside of federal jurisdiction on various Native American reservations around
the state at a time when dozens of indigenous women and girls go missing every
year in Montana; currently, Montana is among the top five states for missing
and murdered cases, according the Urban Indian Health Institute, and despite
the institute fielding more than 5,000 reports of missing or murdered American
Indian and Alaska Native women in 2016, only 116 of those cases were logged in
the Department of Justice’s missing person’s database.
On Sept. 9, former Glacier County Deputy Sheriff Misty LaPlant, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, was officially hired as the missing persons specialist. LaPlant will work intimately with tribal, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in addressing the crisis.