All language subtitles for Murder.in.Big.Horn.S01E02.WEBRip.x264-OK

We're traveling down Interstate 90...

and this road goes all the way across Montana.

Oftentimes, you'll see people walking up

and down the Interstate, and...

sometimes they don't come home.

Coming up here is the rest stop where Selena went missing on

January 1st, 2020.

A Missing Endangered Person Advisory has

been issued for a 16-year-old girl in Big Horn County.

Selena Not Afraid was last seen at the eastbound I-90 rest area

between Billings and Hardin.

Not Afraid left her broken-down vehicle

and was seen walking toward a nearby field.

Authorities say she could have been intoxicated

and was not dressed for the weather conditions.

According to witnesses,

Selena Not Afraid and a group of people traveled eastbound on

Interstate 90 to the rest stop between Hardin and Billings.

The vehicle they were in broke down,

and as the driver was trying to get it going again,

Selena and another woman got out of the vehicle.

Witnesses say Selena walked into a field and the other woman

sat down on one of the curbs.

According to the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office call log,

a call came in from Selena's father.

I called Lawrence "Pete" Big Hair,

the Sheriff of Big Horn County.

I said, "Hey brother, my daughter was apparently left behind

at the rest area and they can't find her."

He contacted his deputies to start moving.

The response was so quick and so fierce,

and all of that was within hours of her being left out there.

I called Selena's mom, Jackie...

"What's going on?"

"We're here, she's not here."

I said, "Who's here? Who's there with you?"

"there's us and the Sheriff's Department are driving

around in the fields with their lights on,"

and I was like...

"Jackie!

Where the hell is she?!"

We'd already had been through things with her.

We taught her already to stay safe and to be strong.

And I got there and there was a BIA command vehicle there,

there was cops, there was people,

there was people on horses, people went in helicopters,

all focused on that rest stop area,

the whole area.

If anybody had a chance to be found,

it was Selena.

If Henny was the spark and Kaysera was the kindling,

then Selena was the forest fire...

Selena Not Afraid was last seen...

That ignited across the media.

People wanted to know:

what the hell is happening in Big Horn County?

Selena was 16 years old.

She's the same age as my boys.

Went to the same school in middle school as my boys.

She was always smiling and surrounded by people.

She was funny and she'd always,

make side comments.

Kinda like dark humor.

Every day after school, Selena and I,

we'd always go to the Bridge.

Right when you go on the highway to Billings,

there's that bridge on top.

We'd stand on top of the bridge, and whenever a semi went by,

we'd always try to make it honk.

Whoever made the most semis honk,

they won.

No, don't record this shit!

We signed our names on that bridge.

And...

they're still there.

The Interstate, I-90, is a major highway

through Montana.

It goes straight through the Crow Reservation.

It goes from Seattle all the way to the East Coast.

It kind of creates this high-trafficked corridor now;

it's a fast track out of here.

Well-traveled highways like I-90 right behind me are fast tracks

for traffickers, getting their victims out of the state,

further and further away from salvation.

There's so much movement that we don't even know about.

Sex trafficking is at epidemic proportions.

"Epidemic" implies that it's something that's hit

recently, but since colonization,

our Native women have been targeted.

To be able to meet the manifest destiny of the American dream,

they needed to rid the lands of the first peoples

that were living there.

We see these white people who are encroaching as the villain.

They will come in and they will take what they want.

There's a saying about Northern Cheyenne...

That a nation is not defeated until the heart of its women

are on the ground.

White colonizers saw our Native women as holding these esteemed places

of respect in our communities,

and there was a strategy to try and do away with that,

to break down the power of our Indian nations.

And so, violence against Native women started very early.

If they couldn't kill the Indians away,

they were going to kill the spirit.

So for instance, the governor in Georgia

instructed the Georgia militia to rape our Cherokee women,

the idea being they'll leave their homes.

If you look at massacres like the Sand Creek massacre...

What the US military did to the Cheyenne and raped,

murdered, and slaughtered Native women...

It certainly has continued up through the US military and

the colonial conquest that happened, and it continues today.

The Disney version of Pocahontas makes it

seem like there was this love story between Pocahontas and

John Smith, and in fact,

it was a situation of sex trafficking

that we have documentation of in our history.

This is a Native girl that was taken from her community by a colonizer.

In today's terms, a lot of people tend to be more

distrusting of white men because of that.

These are the people who raped the women,

these are the people who fundamentally changed everything

about our livelihood.

So when we're talking about sex trafficking,

when we're talking about missing and murdered Indian women,

that corridor of I-90, it is terrifying to think

about where they might have ended up.

Selena's not the first person to go missing off

Recently, Shacaiah Blue Harding has gone missing

out of the Billings area.

She's most likely been trafficked.

It was here at Tumbleweed in Billings,

July 23rd, 2018.

That's the last time anyone can remember seeing 19-year-old

Shacaiah Harding.

I met Shacaiah at Tumbleweed.

It's an organization that helps at-risk youth.

These Native youth were facing a lot of alcohol and drug problems.

They're the main targets for trafficking

because a lot of them are very young and...

want off the street, or they want...

to feel somebody is watching out for them,

or taking care of them.

In the Native community, some people,

because of all the stuff that they're going through,

it makes them a target for these evil people.

Sometimes in human trafficking cases,

women are taken out of the state,

out of the country, but sometimes they're enticed

with free drugs and alcohol, and then they're sold to men,

and they think they're having fun,

they think they're hooking up because they don't see

the exchange of money.

In some cases, women are literally kept drunk

or high in hotel rooms and...

are sold to the highest bidder every night.

If Shacaiah was doing drugs and still active in the scene of drugs,

that makes her very vulnerable to be picked up

and trafficked.

To see a young Native American girl walk down the street,

most people are not gonna pay attention.

Our home life was very hard.

My mother has always been an addict.

With Shacaiah not having a stable home,

she started moving out more towards the streets.

She was diagnosed with meth-induced schizophrenia.

And that's...

kind of where her life started to spiral downward.

Shacaiah basically lived every night for two years

at Tumbleweed, and then...

all of a sudden, she... stopped showing up.

When my mom asked me if I had heard from Shacaiah...

it was a red flag because she always kept in communication

with somebody.

Three weeks after searching, my mom filed

a missing persons report.

A couple of months after she was gone that some of the kids

started finally talking, and they had told us

that she had been sold for drugs.

And then he was gonna turn around and traffic her.

That was the last time anyone heard from Shacaiah

or has seen her.

In September of 2018,

I was assigned Shacaiah's case.

We've conducted several interviews and

we do have information that she might have been trafficked,

but we don't know that for sure, so we cannot confirm

that information.

As of right now, we don't have a crime.

For traffickers, it is easy to transport out of Billings

because you have I-90 that runs all throughout the state,

connecting Billings to the other states in all directions

so that it is almost impossible for us to trace them.

Shacaiah has been seen in a lot of places

that have high human trafficking.

She has been spotted twice once at an airport...

and then in a strip club.

When a white woman goes missing,

they search the state, they drag rivers and they...

pull out every tool they have.

My sister-in-law is missing.

It didn't matter.

It's not a priority because of what?

It's some drunk Native or some crackhead.

Shacaiah's mother says she is begging anyone

who might have any information to please come

forward.

She is somebody's daughter.

She means a lot to us.

I didn't think I was gonna be one of them Indians

waiting for...

one of their family members to come back home,

to be gone.

There's so many of 'em.

So many that disappeared off the face of the Earth...

with no traces of who-knows-where they've been.

The majority of the girls that have been trafficked

out of Billings that we know of...

I have not heard of any that have come home yet.

I know a lot of families are still actively searching.

It's disheartening because when years start going by...

you start to worry if you're ever going to find them.

I've lived in this community my whole life.

I've seen people vanish and families desperate for help

and no one respond.

And then when Selena Not Afraid went missing

two years after Shacaiah Blue Harding,

there was such a quick response, and this was unprecedented.

Selena Not Afraid's case happened after missing and

murdered indigenous women started to gain

national attention.

And at that point, enough cases had come through that there was

some more involvement, and so we did get

a quicker law enforcement response.

The search for Selena was something I had never seen

before ever in my life.

They had a drone, they had a helicopter,

they had volunteers from all over the place.

Selena Not Afraid was last seen at the I-90 rest area between

Billings and Hardin on New Year's Day.

Today, search and rescue dogs widened the search radius by two

or three miles.

There are so many things that could have happened

from the rest area because it's hooked on the interstate.

Was she trafficked?

Was there drugs involved?

Was there family members involved that weren't saying anything?

The one woman is still there but Selena is gone.

The other woman said that Selena tried to talk her into crossing

the fence and going towards Old Highway.

And she refused, so she went anyway.

And that was the last that Selena Not Afraid was seen by anybody.

When I was there, I walked down that creek

and I walked around there.

I kept yelling for Selena.

And I come back and I said, "Selena ain't here.

How was she supposed to get over that fence?

Look how high it is.

Selena didn't go that direction."

As soon as that happened, I suspected that somebody abducted

her right away.

We had a lot of obstacles, but there were certain volunteers

who weren't law enforcement that wanted to be law enforcement,

and it was hard to coordinate all of that.

There's only a few law enforcement people,

and we didn't have the evidence we needed to find her.

The Big Horn County people were interviewing

the people that were in that van,

but to this day, they never talked to me about

the people she was with.

They never talked to any of us.

It's surrounded in mystery,

this case.

The weeks that Selena was missing,

it was like time stood still.

Everybody knew who she was.

I'm not sure what it was about Selena that people resonated with,

but there was something about her that people connected with.

Even as a child, she was like that;

people wanted to be around her, they wanted to be her friend.

Selena would walk into a room and light I tup,

and her smile was contagious.

It reminded me, I was safe being myself.

She was happy even though,

she was going through things.

She struggled a lot with...

losing her three siblings.

Selena came from a family with a lot of loss,

and all of that loss in that family amped up the stakes

to find her because the community thought that it was too much

for the family if Selena was to not be found.

Out of the five children that Jackie had,

three of them had died untimely deaths.

Selena's brother Preston, he got shot up there in Billings

by the Yellowstone SWAT team.

He got shot 17 times.

Preston was killed in 2017.

One year later, she lost her sister, Tristan.

Tristan was killed in Billing, she was hit and run.

Selena had a twin sister named Zoe.

Zoe died by the time she was 11.

Selena would get lonesome for Zoe sometimes,

and she'd come to me and she'd be crying for Zoe

because they were real close.

Zoe killed herself, hung herself downstairs.

After Zoe's death, we got her into counseling,

we got her into therapy, and after Preston's death,

it was a downhill spiral.

She was sad and down,

but she never showed it.

Selena was able to control her emotions.

She was a strong person.

After losing her three siblings,

she definitely made it a priority to be there for others.

If you were having a bad day,

she'd smile and, make you laugh.

And she'd always say, "Be glad you're still here.

Some people don't get another day."

She had so many people in her corner.

She was a lot of their strength without realizing that

that's what kept her going is being other people's strength

instead of focusing on all of her own grief.

At that stage in her life, all's we cared about

was whatever it takes for you to be happy.

You want freedom? You got it.

You want to go stay with your friends?

You got it.

You wanna go out New Year's Eve?

You got it.

It all started at Billings.

When Sal went out New Year's Eve,

it was a last-minute thing.

She dropped Sal off and Sal turned around

and waved at her mom.

Jackie dropped her off thinking she'd be back.

On New Year's Eve, I knew that Selena was gonna be out

in Billings at a house party.

And there was older people there I know at that party,

and people, in my eyes,

she'd never hang out with.

It was mostly alcohol that brought her to that house.

So the next morning, I called Selena... this was nine o'clock

and Selena answered right away.

And I was "Hey, Sal! How's it going?"

She said, "Good," and we both said,

"Happy New Year!"

And then, then it clicked...

the background noise clicked to me.

I heard men talking, I heard guy voices,

and I was "That's not right."

And I could hear music in the background and I was

"Hey, Sal," I said, "whatever's going on,

it's time to go home now."

And she said, "I am!

My mom's coming to get me."

Selena calls her mom, Jackie,

to come pick her up, and Jackie did show up at that house

where they were partying at, and they couldn't find Selena no place.

Couldn't have been no more than 45 minutes.

And then, meantime, that's when they got in that van.

Someone in that van posted a Snapchat video.

It shows them drinking.

So you look at the video,

they're driving around in Billings,

and they could have easily dropped Selena off on South Side

where Selena's mom lives.

They didn't, they...

drove right by.

They could have let her off.

Why was Selena in that van?

Why take Sal?

That's what I don't know.

I don't know where they were going.

Sal had no reason to go anywhere.

She already told me she was waiting for her mom to go home.

She wasn't drunk when she talked to me,

she wasn't slurring, she wasn't being belligerent,

she wasn't anything.

And I would've known if there was anything different,

but it wasn't.

The search for Selena Not Afraid is still going

following her disappearance on January 1st.

They've been searching out here all day and the sheriff says

they're also doing more investigating to get a better idea

of where Selena might be.

I knew this matter was getting bigger and bigger,

and all I can do is keep contact with law enforcement.

And I trusted my family who were participating in the search,

but I can't go there because there is a court order in place

that says I cannot have contact with my daughter.

Leroy Not Afraid and the mother were having a bitter divorce

and he wanted to stay out of the middle of it.

He had a restraining order, so we knew that Leroy would not be out

there searching for his own daughter.

We did talk to the mother.

The detectives interviewed people in the van,

and they interviewed other people at the scene that were

at the house party, because at that point,

they still didn't know if she was in Billings.

We didn't know where she was at that point.

Pretty much know that she's not in this area.

We feel... not only myself, but lot of the family members as well...

with all the people coming through here

several times over, we would've found her if she was here,

so we've been kind of leaning towards she may have left the area.

We're gonna continue searching.

BIA pulled out and Big Horn County

were looking in different areas.

But we weren't leaving the rest area.

"When I get her, I'll leave."

Because Sal deserves...

a happy ending.

Today, a symbol of support and solidarity as the search

for a missing Hardin teenager approaches one week.

Today, Hardin High students rallied together

to raise awareness and spread the word about Selena Not Afraid,

who's been missing since New Year's Eve,

hoping their message grows hope throughout the community.

There's hope and they will find you.

We all hope we can find you.

Wanna, think of a good outcome and not think of the worst,

because I know she's still out there and alive.

The task force was brought in by the FBI.

They're specifically tasked to find individuals

that are missing in these cases, these national cases.

When we brought in the national law enforcement agencies to help us,

we wanted to show that even if there was something bad going on

in Big Horn County Sheriff's Office,

the other agencies would've said something if there was.

Some people didn't trust the Sheriff's Office.

Every day, I would get up in the morning,

update.

"This is what we're doing today.

This is all we heard."

I have to update because I have to keep their attention,

they have to keep sharing Sal, because once they scroll by her,

it's over.

We were setting up our own little command station,

feeding people, recruiting volunteers.

According to Selena's aunt Cheryl Horn,

the local assistance has been great,

but they still are in need of locals who know the land to lend

a helping hand.

We don't have a lot of people coming here from this area who live here,

who have family members missing.

We need you to come and say, "Let's all go together."

More people were coming with food,

more people were coming with donations,

more people were coming with SUVs,

more people were willing to walk.

Strangers, all came with their moms and

their kids, dads and their kids.

Missing and murdered indigenous women,

an issue here in Montana and the nation that communities

are trying to create more awareness about.

The Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women's Movement

has been a conversation in Indian country for decades.

When people started to realize that Native women,

Native girls are in danger every day of their lives,

they started to want to help, they started to want to rise up,

and a lot of non-Natives latched onto it.

And then when Selena Not Afraid went missing,

it solidified that movement.

But in Selena's case,

the initial response was totally different.

Five, six years ago,

we weren't getting any national news coverage for these cases.

When Henny Scott went missing, it hit a cord

in the community at large.

It wasn't Natives, it was everyone.

And then Kaysera went missing and people started asking,

"What is going on in Big Horn County?"

Say her name!

Kaysera!

Say her name!

Kaysera!

And then once the Selena case hit,

the news coverage was everywhere;

it went international.

And that was because the family pushed,

hard to get that story out there.

ELM flew their big high-power drone over here,

we had a helicopter fly over, we had people walking.

Some of the family members of Selena Not Afraid,

they wanted to be in the spotlight,

which is why they kept pushing themselves in the national media.

They wanted their 15 minutes of fame,

which, again, put more pressure on the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office,

because you can't do your job there.

They called me on Messenger...

Big Horn County Sheriff's Office wanted me to be quiet!

They wanted me to quit posting on Facebook.

And I said, "No!

You bring me a court order and I'll be quiet."

Okay, bye.

"I want everybody to know what's going on and what happened."

When you're looking for 17 days,

obviously, you start freaking out.

But once the snow started falling,

I started crying.

And I was "it's cold out there,

and she has her little jacket on.

Her little jacket she always wears every day,

she had that on."

That's all she had.

I woke up angry on January 20th...

angry.

It was something, it was like I felt heaviness on me.

Not even probably an hour later...

I got a call...

if I knew there was a body found in Big Horn County.

We begin tonight with some sad news out

of Big Horn County.

The body of 16-year-old Selena...

Selena Not Afraid has been found.

Her body was found about three quarters

of a mile from the I-90 rest stop.

Between Billings and Hardin,

the same place where she was last seen alive on New Year's Day.

I see this article and they say,

"Body Found, Claimed to Be Selena Not Afraid's."

And then I remember, I automatically...

busted out crying and I was like...

I never cried like that before.

Crews from the Department of the Interior

found Selena's body after a systematic grid search of the area.

Now, with the body of Selena Not Afraid being found

only three quarters of a mile away from the rest area

where she originally disappeared, that begs the question:

why was she not found sooner?

Authorities in the area say that this place

is big country and things can go unnoticed.

You could almost walk right on top of her

and not see her.

Until we got the professional trackers out there doing that,

we didn't find her, and they were taking one grid at

a time and searching it and that took days.

Big Horn County Undersheriff Eric Winburn

says 16-year-old Selena Not Afraid's body was located out in the open.

There was sage brush in the area and she was kind of laying

in the middle of the sage brush.

She was less than a mile from the rest area,

and that frustrated everybody because they were thinking,

"If she's only less than a mile from the rest area,

why didn't we find her sooner?"

We went to the site where they found Sal.

And she is not laying in any bushes,

she's not laying in any brush, nothing.

Where she was was out in the open.

You could see her from 100, 200 yards away if she was laying there.

She was right there by that cut-across road.

There were so many people searching for Sal.

There's tire tracks, there's four-by-four tracks,

there's dog tracks, there's horse prints,

all of that in that area, all of it.

We had a woman, her and her sons had side-by-sides

and they covered that whole area, and they were there.

Both of the sheriff and undersheriff tried to convince her

they missed it, they tried to convince people

in the helicopters they missed her.

No, if she was there, you would see her because of where she's laying;

she's not hidden.

If somebody had killed her and tried to dump her out there,

there'd either be footprints or there'd be tire tracks.

There was neither one of those.

You couldn't have drove a vehicle out there and dumped her

without lights and somebody would've saw her or heard her,

because there was constantly somebody there 24/7 at the rest area.

The undersheriff also reported to us

that there was no animal activity in or around Selena's body,

which means there was no scavenging.

To have a body out in the wilderness for 20 days...

and to have it fully intact...

is impossible.

I don't believe that her body was there the whole time.

I don't.

No foul play is suspected at this time.

When will you guys know more?

Probably, after the autopsy's,

conducted there in the next couple of days.

Without an autopsy complete,

how could investigators rule out foul play so quickly?

It makes you guys look like you're trying to cover something up.

I know, and we didn't view this as a criminal investigation;

this was a search and rescue.

It's a missing person.

It makes absolutely no sense for Selena to walk into a field.

Selena was 16 years old, a student athlete,

and very, very healthy.

Why couldn't she stand up and walk to the rest stop?

There's never a question into why.

Why is someone in the middle of a field?

As a journalist, I was always taught to ask why.

So as an investigator, why are they not asking the same question?

An autopsy is slated for tomorrow,

but questions still remain.

Will anyone be held accountable for Selena's death?

Undersheriff Winburn, I asked him if any criminal charges

could follow in this case.

He said it is possible; once that autopsy for Selena is complete,

authorities will have a better understanding

of what happened to her.

At the time of discovery,

her remains were frozen.

There was no indication of foul play from the standpoint

of trauma, strangulation, or otherwise.

We did not discover alcohol.

However, if Selena was able to walk around as I believe

she was for hours, it's very possible for the alcohol

to be metabolized in the body.

We were able to find findings that were associated with dehydration,

with starvation, and with freezing to death.

The determination of the cause of death was hypothermia.

With hypothermia deaths, it's not uncommon for individuals

to become disoriented and gradually incapacitated.

During that state, they may crawl on the ground,

and there were abrasions consistent with that type of activity.

Individuals who experience hypothermia

will oftentimes paradoxically begin removing their clothing.

Selena's legs were facing up

and she was rotated at the torso and

seems to be in the process of removing a sweater.

It's my opinion that Selena ultimately walked to that location

where she was discovered and died at that location.

An official autopsy report shows Selena Not Afraid

died of hypothermia according to the state's Medical Examiner's Office.

The state medical examiner's report says

the situation surrounding what happened to Not Afraid was an accident.

This report confirms...

They said it was hypothermia and it was an accident,

accidental.

So there's no investigation.

But I knew what happened and I knew she was abducted.

I knew that because we couldn't find her for 20 days.

She wandered out there on her own accord

and she died of hypothermia.

And, she was drunk, she had very little clothing on.

It started raining that first night,

so she'd been out there that whole time,

wet and cold.

That was the absolute reason why she died.

But again, the family did not want to hear the truth.

When families experience a sudden unexpected loss,

it's difficult at times to accept that an individual may have been...

Responsible for the circumstances that led to their death.

In many ways, it's easier to displace that responsibility on someone else.

Hypothermia is the go-to answer to the dead Indian problem in Montana.

No questions are answered, sweep it under the rug,

"hypothermia," every single time.

This disregard for trying to provide answers to family members

and that there can be an attempt to close out

these cases close them out like they're done,

like it can ever be over... with these statements

of accidental hypothermia, it's mind-boggling.

Most of these cases of missing and murdered

indigenous women, a lot of the time,

they're found in a field, or along the road,

or in a ditch.

A lot of times, they're found beaten,

but according to medical reports,

they die of hypothermia, like in Henny Scott's case.

Henny Scott's cause of death was reported as hypothermia,

but according to the family, she had obvious bumps

and bruises on her forehead, on her arms, on her chest,

and she had a broken nose.

If you're beaten to a point where you can't move

and you're out in the elements in Montana,

you're probably gonna die of hypothermia if you can't get anywhere.

But there's a reason you're out there,

there's a reason that you're unable to get to help.

Hypothermia is only a small piece of the puzzle.

Regardless of what a medical examiner might say is the cause,

we know that there is more to it than that.

Our girls don't die.

There are factors that lead up to that.

On top of the trafficking scare,

we have drug addictions, the alcohol abuse,

and we have domestic violence rates that are...

skyrocketing.

It's a shame because a lot of crime gets swept under the rug,

and these young girls are at risk for a lot of issues,

sometimes in their own homes.

In the case of Selena, apparently there were...

allegations of sexual abuse against her father,

Leroy.

After Zoe died, Leroy kept Selena from us.

He got custody of her like that...

and took Selena out of here, away from her mom.

She was with him that whole year or year-and-a-half,

18 months before we even seen her again.

After that, it seemed like Selena was always scared

all the time when she was with him and she was real quiet.

One day, I'm sitting here and I get a text from Jackie

and she said, "Selena found her voice.

She's gonna tell what happened to her,

and we're doing an interview with the authorities."

I witnessed Selena giving the statement to the BIA Office,

Social Services.

Selena said that her dad abused her four times.

There was an order of protection to restrain me

from seeing my daughter.

The petition stated...

very ugly...

made-up details.

There was allegations of abuse,

that I touched her inappropriately in a sexual manner.

When I read the document, I about fell over.

There is no flippin' way I would ever touch my girls or any of my children...

or anybody's children,

for that matter... in any way that would hurt them at all.

I said, "Okay, if they wanna push it,

let's do a polygraph.

Have my daughter do a polygraph and I'll do a polygraph."

I said, "Let's dance.

They wanna to do stuff like this?

Let's do it!"

The mom withdrew the order of protection in Yellowstone County,

County, and then, in our settlement negotiations,

I agreed to stay...

keep my distance from my girl until the age of 18.

I was thinking, "We've got a 16-year-old girlnow who's accusing me

of horrible things that never happened.

Can I be alone with her again?

Can I discipline her again?"

I had to come to the realization I can't parent my girl no more,

I can't be in the same room alone anymore.

The last time I saw Selena was July of 2018.

Why wasn't he charged with anything?

I'm tired of it.

I'm tired of no ice.

Because behind Sal is a big, long line of girls, all these other missing girls,

and there are some families who think

they're working on their cases at that sheriff's office

and...

that case is probably in the trash.

People don't see Native women and girls as human.

We are looked down on, we are devalued by society at large,

by law enforcement.

These girls mean nothing to them.

"Look, it's another dead Indian."

That's all it is to these people investigating these cases.

In my experience growing up here right in Crow,

I never felt like cops were doing the work for you.

And it always seemed to me like law enforcement that worked

in our communities, they felt like they had to be there,

and so there was this annoyed behavior that came with them,

instead of someone who wanted to do the job.

In the Native community,

they must feel like the white people are not doing their job,

they're not trying to bring ice for the Native Americans.

Or they trying to make it out that,

it's a white boogeyman killing or abducting people when it isn't the case.

And, what they don't realize is...

the Native Americans don't take the responsibility

of what's happened in the community...

Alcohol, drugs, the parents aren't taking care of them.

It looks like there's gonna be big problems if you accept that stuff

and if you accept it as a culture as a community.

In that Selena Not Afraid case, Selena's mother took her to the alcohol party.

The mother should have been prosecuted

for taking her daughter there in the first place.

The driver... who was a Native American,

who was an adult... basically abandoned Selena there at the rest area.

That should have never happened; he should've been charged.

Instead of taking responsibility for some of the Natives doing things

to other Natives, they come up with,

"It's the white man doing this to us."

If it doesn't fit that, they don't wanna know the truth.

Selena Not Afraid is a prime example of that.

Working in Big Horn County, I don't believe that MMIW is real.

I don't think the issue's real.

It's easy, I think, to point at something and say,

"It's this way because of them" or "because of that."

But ultimately, you are of your environment.

You tell a people that everything they've done is wrong,

and then you repackage it to fit the opposing side,

and people start to doubt themselves.

We don't value ourselves anymore,

therefore, we're not gonna value anything around us,

which, unfortunately, women are a part of that.

I think a lot of people think that Native women

are disposable.

We're easily forgotten.

How do you leave somebody on the side of the road

without any regard for their life?

How do you...

go home at night...

without everyone that you left with and think that that's okay?

You should think that there's something wrong with that act,

but it's so ingrained that I think even Native women see

other Native women as disposable,

to the point where we don't even realize it.

It goes all the way back to the history of colonization.

We lack cultural confidence, we lack...

cultural competency.

We've allowed ourselves to be a defeated people,

so therefore, everything around us,

it's all part of this thing.

This...

this garbage system we've inherited,

which is to have no self-respect.

And the most dangerous thing is an insecure man.

When you're growing up in a situation

where you're constantly on-edge who's lurking,

who's looking, who's following me?

Inside, you feel like you're gonna be the target

of sexual abuse or gonna be attacked.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

And it puts kids in that sense of "Eff it," you know?

"If I'm gonna die.

I don't have to worry about who's around me,

I don't have to worry about the people I'm with because if I'm gonna die,

or if I'm gonna be trafficked,

or if I'm gonna be murdered, or if I'm gonna be kidnapped,

I might as well have fun."

That attitude contributes even more to the crisis that we're living in.

They're gonna put themselves in dangerous situations anyway.

With so many of these cases of our missing and

murdered girls, someone knows what happened in all of these situations.

A lot of times, we know who might have been involved,

and that someone is still walking around our community.

There's not anyone out there fighting for ice for us.

I resigned as the undersheriff in August 2020,

and the sheriff, he appointed Leroy Not Afraid as my successor.

Leroy Not Afraid was the father of Selena Not Afraid.

I knew that there was...

charges of sexual abuse.

I don't know how far the investigation went,

but I know he was never charged at the time.

My current occupation is I'm the undersheriff for Big Horn County,

Montana.

And I'm not here in my official capacity,

I'm here as...

the dad of the late Selena Not Afraid.

In the case of Selena...

after her body was found, it seemed like that case stopped,

it hit a wall.

And shortly after that point, Leroy was appointed undersheriff,

which, to me, felt odd that an open case involving his daughter

is still in the hands of Big Horn County and

he's appointed undersheriff.

I never thought in a million years I would be part

of the law enforcement.

My adopted brother is the sheriff of Big Horn County,

and he had asked me before, when Selena was still alive,

to be part of law enforcement.

But I told him no because of everything that was going on in my personal life.

When he fired his last undersheriff,

he came again.

And I thought to myself,"

Maybe I'll give this a go."

As the undersheriff,

is he investigating?

Is he not investigating?

He very well could be.

He probably shouldn't be, but we don't know.

There's been no addressing of that in any way,

shape, or form.

When I took the oath in Big Horn County, Montana,

I made the personal decision and the professional

decision to insulate myself from any investigative file,

having any kind of discussions with any of the detectives,

any law enforcement officer, because...

I, as a law enforcement officer, cannot compromise

an investigation that may or may not be ongoing.

So he's undersheriff now.

His friend, Sheriff Big Hair, hires him.

They're cousins and they're good friends.

The problem that lies here in Big Horn County is that everybody

is connected and everybody is related to everybody else

in one way or another.

So somebody knows something.