Grantee launches statewide effort to document missing/murdered Indigenous cases in South Dakota

Savannah Standing Bear, shown in an illustration based on an image from her family, went missing in March 2025 from her home on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. At right is a sign along a highway on the reservation meant to call attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, who are often represented by a red handprint. (South Dakota Searchlight photo illustration by Joshua Haiar and sign photo by John Hult)

South Dakota Searchlight, with support from the Fund, is cataloging Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) cases in the state, which has no definitive record of such cases. In collaboration with ICT News, Searchlight is combining data from official databases with names solicited from family members who may have never reported their loved one’s case to authorities. The outlets are publishing MMIP stories from all nine Native nations in the state. Searchlight recently published the second of those stories, involving a Sicangu Lakota woman named Savannah Standing Bear, one of at least 10 active cases on the Rosebud Reservation. Each story in the series includes a link to a questionnaire families can use to report cases, and all stories are free to publish under a creative commons license.