Information
Name: Flathead
Tribes:
Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai & Pend d'Oreilles
Population: 26,172
Native: 20%
Counties: Flathead,
Lake, Missoula,
Sanders
Without Closure
Regardless of jurisdiction issues, when a tribal member dies and a case goes cold, those who remain ache for answers.
Written by Allison Maier
The night before her father was found by the side of the road with two broken legs, hypothermia and a head injury that would eventually kill him, Shelly Fyant dreamt of fires, floods and plague.
It was her first night back from a business trip her 8-year-old son, A.J., had begged her not to take. She didn't know that his insistence that something bad was going to happen would later feel like a premonition.
Everett Fyant was full-blood Salish, a descendent of one of the last families forced from the Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana to the Flathead Indian Reservation in the late 1800s. He was a Navy veteran and a jack-of-all-trades. From 1964 to 1967, he served as one of the youngest-ever members of the tribal council.
He worked as a carpenter, janitor, plumber and rancher. He cared for the grounds of the Flathead Agency so meticulously that it was referred to as the "showcase of the reservation." He taught carpentry classes at Two Eagle River School and then at the Salish Kootenai College in Pablo— his final career.
The morning of April 22, 1988, two Dixon residents called police after finding Everett lying unconscious by the highway. His hat lay next to him on the pavement and his glasses had been knocked under a bush. Some "Cabin Fever" lottery tickets littered the ground next to him while others rested on his right shoulder.
He appeared to be the victim of a hit and run, though after a night of drinking and allegedly arguing with other late-night visitors to the Dixon Bar other explanations seemed possible. Everett died 105 days later, having spent the last three and a half months of his life in a coma, shuffled among various hospitals. He died at the age of 51 — Shelly Fyant's age now.
After 21 years, the cause of the injuries that led to Everett's death remain unknown, his case file gathering dust in some storage facility in Sanders County, where the clerk of court's computer system only holds information for the past 10 years. Most of the officials originally involved in the case have retired or died.
But though law enforcement officials have moved on, the Fyant family has not. They say the case was handled unjustly, blaming an inefficient law enforcement system and racial stereotypes on a reservation where more than 70 percent of the population is white.
Law enforcement officials on the reservation say that the shared state-tribal jurisdiction agreement adopted on the Flathead in the early 1960s makes prosecuting crimes there more efficient than is common on Montana's six other reservations. Nevertheless, they admit that sometimes cases still fall between the cracks.
More often than not, hit and runs remain unsolved no matter where they occur. But Shelly Fyant says Everett's case was never investigated the way it should have been, with the state agencies that should have taken control, such as the Sanders Country Sheriff 's Department and the Montana Highway Patrol, pushing responsibility off to the tribe, which couldn't do uch either. She says her father's case was treated like that of "just another drunk Indian."
"Sanders County, the Highway Patrol and the tribal police of the Flathead Reservation should have all been involved and to my recollection no one ever came to the hospital to take pictures, to talk to the doctors about his injuries, any of that," she says.
Though it's been two decades, emotional scars remain raw and tears come easily. Everett's younger sister, Virginia Butler, says it's something you never get over.
"It's something you think about every day," she says. "You pray to God it will be resolved."
Prosecuting crimes in Indian Country is famously complicated, requiring precise knowledge of the race of the perpetrator and the victim and an on-the-scene judgment about the nature and severity of the crime to determine whether the tribe or the federal government has jurisdiction. Investigating agencies can include tribal law officers, Bureau of Indian Affairs investigators, FBI agents, or state Highway Patrol officers.