BILLINGS – Hundreds of people gathered at the MSU-Billings Native American Achievement Center Friday morning for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women March.
The group marched on the west side of North 27th Street toward the Yellowstone County Courthouse.
The march began at about 10 a.m.
The Native American Achievement Center at MSU-Billings wrote the crisis of MMIWG is prevalent in the Billings community and the march is an important step in ending the violence against Native women.
The march falls on the same day Hanna’s Act, a bill named in honor of Hanna Harris, a Lame Deer woman murdered on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 2013, is scheduled for its third reading in the Montana Senate.
Hanna’s Act originally said the Montana Department of Justice “shall” hire a missing persons specialist to work closely with local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement agencies on missing persons cases. The specialist would have been responsible for managing the state missing persons database and organizing training for law enforcement authorities on how to handle missing persons cases.
Republican Sen. Jennifer Fielder of Thompson Falls said the bill was amended to say that the department “may” hire the specialist, and to remove the position’s specific job description.
