Monique Vondall-Rieke: Indian victims still treated differently

There is no doubt that unsolved murders in Indian Country has been an issue since before Anna Mae Pictou Aquash’s hands were severed from her deceased body and mailed to Washington, D.C. for fingerprint identification by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in 1976. Aquash’s murder was not brought to justice until the new millennium and finalized with the last prosecution taking place in 2008.

In 2001 on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians Reservation near the Canadian border in Belcourt, North Dakota, George Jeanotte, a Native American male Vietnam Veteran was murdered and to this day, no one has been charged with his murder despite the family of Jeanotte’s pleas to find his killer. The FBI charged the local law enforcement in Belcourt to investigate the local murder, placing a Special Agent located on the reservation in charge of the investigation, which yielded no results in finding the killer of George Jeanotte. Instead of taking a direct approach, the FBI delegated responsibilities to local agents who were unable to solve the crime. To this day, no suspects, only rumors surround the mystery of Jeanotte’s disappearance and the discovery of his remains in a local body of water nearly a year and a half after he went missing.

The differences of the treatment of American Indian cases off of the reservation do not yield any other satisfactory results. In Grand Forks, North Dakota, a young American Indian man, Russell Turcotte, went missing in 2002. Dru Sjodin, a University of North Dakota student, was abducted in 2003 and immediately the Grand Forks community went on high alert to find the young, beautiful, white woman and subsequently to find her abductor who now sits on death row. The police placed bulletin alerts all over the region, search parties sponsored by the police and the UND Campus drove bus loads out to remote locations along the North Dakota – Minnesota border. Russell Turcotte’s family was told they could not hang missing flyers on campus for him due to “policy.” The Turcotte family was not given the same accord as the Sjodin family and does not hold them responsible for the local community’s response to their missing son and wishes that they had been given the same immediate alerts. Grand Forks Police officials cited it was “his lifestyle” that polarized the cases.

Considering that the Bureau of Justice Statistics have not released a report since 1999, there are few and far between moments in DOJ history that surmount to any sort of reformation in the way of diversity, this narrow moment in history is one to join the bandwagon on. DOJ is taking note – sending people – to Baltimore to look into the investigation of the recent riots surrounding the death of Freddie Gray. The death of this one man will surmount to action being taken.