Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons: Relatives fight for changes, share stories

Carissa HeavyRunner is never going to stop fighting to change the systems that allow injustice.

On Tuesday afternoon on the University of Montana campus, HeavyRunner spoke for an event on Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.

HeavyRunner, who is Blackfeet and Navajo, shared a story that no mother should ever have to tell.

Her daughter, Mika Josephine Westwolf, was killed on March 31, 2023, north of Arlee, by a driver in the early morning hours. Westwolf was walking along Highway 93, and the car that hit her didn't stop until it overheated near Polson.

It took seven months for authorities to file felony charges against the driver, Sunny K. White.

"Then it took two and a half years for her to finally be sentenced," HeavyRunner told the crowd. "And it wasn't without advocating, still speaking at public events, creating a petition to the Department of Justice to jump in and help us, because there was no transparency, no communication with law enforcement at all."

HeavyRunner said before the charges were filed, she had to raise awareness.

"It took seven long months of advocating, realizing that I couldn't just trust the system to work as it should, that we had to humanize my daughter," she recalled. "We had to show her picture, which the media often doesn't do, you know, when this happens to an Indigenous person or a minority, statistic-wise. And that's how it is."

HeavyRunner said her daughter's death might have just faded away if she didn't fight for justice.

"I had to think, how could I make people care about this issue?" she said. "How could I put them in my shoes, if only for a question, and I realized it's asking that simple question, what if this was your child?"

HeavyRunner said she had to go to local businesses in Arlee and ask them to save camera footage. She said the lead investigator at the Montana Highway Patrol only met with them once. She felt like she and her family were treated with condescending behavior and were ignored.

Finally, though, after years of waiting, HeavyRunner and her family were able to be inside a courtroom to see a verdict delivered.

In 2025, a Lake County judge sentenced White to 10 years in prison without parole.

Other women bravely told their stories at the Tuesday event, and all of them spoke of how the criminal justice system was slow to react or to deliver results.

Shelly Fyant, a state lawmaker from Arlee and a former chairwoman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said her father's murder in 1988 has never been solved. Fyant said she's pushing for more changes at the state level. She also said the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were the first in Montana to develop a tribal community response plan to coordinate all the different law enforcement jurisdictions that overlap on the Flathead Reservation.

Bonnie Asencio, a member of CSKT, told the story of how her daughter Maureena Twoteeth was walking along Highway 93 in January of 2022 near St. Ignatius when she was killed while walking along the road by a driver in a huge truck.

She also feels that a proper investigation was not done by authorities.

Jaycee Longtimesleeping told the story of how her mother was killed by her father, and how she's fighting to keep him behind bars because he's due for parole soon.

In 2019, the Montana Legislature created the Montana Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force. It consists of representatives from tribes across the state as well as members of local, state and federal law enforcement entities.

Native Americans comprise 6.7% of the state’s population, but as of mid-2025 they accounted for roughly 26% of the state’s active missing persons reports, on average.

The event on Tuesday was sponsored by the the Montana Department of Corrections Victim Services Bureau.

According to Chloe Zuraff, an anti-human trafficking coordinator with the bureau, the day was about "holding space for conversations and recognition of missing and murdered Indigenous persons."

"We recognize that this is a heavy topic, and today really is just about listening, learning and honoring the lived experiences of our panelists, who I'm so grateful for," she said.

There was also a memorial display, called "Empty Place at the Table," to honor the lost loved ones of participating Indigenous families and others.

One of those places was for Jermain Charlo, an Indigenous woman who went missing on June 16, 2018, after leaving a bar in downtown Missoula.

She has never been seen since. Anyone with information about Charlo is asked to call 911 or 406-396-3217.