A Native American woman's brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law

Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind’s murder sparked outrage in the US. A bill named after her aims to address the crisis of violence against Native women.

There was heartbreak across Indian country in August 2017 when the body of 22-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was found duct-taped in plastic in the Red River.

The ribbon of water demarcates North Dakota from Minnesota, a tributary flowing northward across the Canadian border. It is where, a few years earlier, an indigenous girl, 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, was discovered wrapped in a duvet cover and weighted down by rocks.The tales of these two tragedies and the river itself are emblematic of a modern violence against one of the world’s most vulnerable populations, indigenous women and girls. It is a problem police and authorities in the US have been accused of ignoring.

The river, over the decades, has come to be seen by many in the indigenous community as a dumping ground for discarded bodies, but their sense is that detectives don’t take this seriously. Loved ones of the missing started to drag the Red on their own starting in 2014 after finding Fontaine. That year, advocates say they pulled seven bodies from the river.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/01/savanna-act-native-women-missing-murdered