Domestic Abuse Feeds Crisis Over Missing and Murdered Native Americans

This article was produced through a partnership between Newsweek and the Osage News, the official independent media of the Osage Nation. The cooperative reporting process aims to shine a light on the cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People throughout the United States and the multiple failures to end the decades-long deadly crisis that spans the continent.

A 13-year-old Osage runaway found dead of a fentanyl overdose at a hotel. A promising young Cheyenne River Sioux actor mysteriously dead after going missing. A woman beaten to death in a bout of domestic violence on the Osage reservation.

The cases are very different, but they all involve Native Americans and domestic abuse—a subject rarely spoken of openly in Native communities. Yet, domestic violence is one of the factors driving the crisis over Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, community leaders and experts say.

Domestic violence can make Native Americans vulnerable to repeating abusive dynamics and can also play into human trafficking, victimization by outsiders and what psychologists describe as generational trauma as a result of centuries of war and abuse.

“We have to do better to protect the most vulnerable among us from these traumatic experiences, so that we stop passing them on to the next generation,” said Osage Nation Social Services Director LaDonna Shadlow.

Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said that domestic violence—especially against women—would traditionally have been stopped by the community. Domestic violence must no longer be allowed to continue, he said.

“While Native people have made huge strides in healing from generational trauma, this area remains clouded in secrets and misunderstandings. Allowing any abuser to walk freely among us cannot be tolerated,” said Chief Standing Bear, whose people’s historic abuse by outsiders was brought to attention last year in the film Killers of the Flower Moon.

One case last November involved 13-year-old Osage JJ Buffalomeat, who died while in the foster care system.

A runaway goes missing

When Buffalomeat went missing, she was what the police call a “runaway case,” and the police took her to the Community Intervention Center in Downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, where staff do not always check IDs.

Buffalomeat left with a man who claimed he was her uncle.

Hours later, the Osage youth was found dead at a hotel due to fentanyl toxicity. Buffalomeat’s aunt, Angela Pratt, rushed to Hillcrest Medical Center after Hominy Police notified her family that Buffalomeat was at the hospital.

The circumstances around Buffalomeat’s death have kept the investigation open, according to Julie Hubbard, communications executive director at the Cherokee Nation, who verified that Cherokee marshals are trying to find out what happened in the death that took place on their land in Tulsa.

Murder is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But the data over the missing and murdered are unclear — something many Native Americans see as a sign of the lack of seriousness in addressing the crisis.

The FBI‘s National Crime Information Center showed that 5,491 Indigenous women were missing at the end of 2023, yet the Department of Justice‘s NamUs – a project to document missing persons cases – only listed 261 missing Indigenous women during the same period.

There is no clear public data as to how many of those cases also involved domestic violence.

Those in foster care are especially vulnerable to human trafficking, according to Osage advocate Olivia Gray, founder of Northeast Oklahoma Indigenous Safety & Education (N.O.I.S.E.), who works closely with victims as they navigate court cases.

Other cases combining allegations of domestic violence and indigenous abuse have resulted in poorly-understood deaths, as in the case of Cheyenne River Sioux actor Cole Brings Plenty — who was himself accused of being an abuser.

Those allegations were questioned by Native Americans when, last March, the 27-year-old Native American actor went missing after his hair was forcibly cut by a white man — an act many Native people considered assault — while he was at a concert dancing and his hair was tangled in a microphone.

Abuse accusations

Brings Plenty was later found dead in a wooded area in Kansas. It later emerged that he was accused of abusing a woman, his white neighbor, shortly before he disappeared.

Many Native Americans responded with outrage that his hair had been cut in an act that echoed Boarding School era abuses and forced assimilation, but did not entertain the possibility that Brings Plenty had abused the woman.

When a warrant was put out for his arrest, many in the community demanded evidence that the Lawrence, Kansas Police Department said they could not provide due to the law protecting those involved in domestic violence cases.

The Native community largely rejected the allegations that the actor, who had performed in Yellowstone spinoff 1923 and was hailed as a model student at Haskell Indian Nations University, had been committing domestic abuse.

“It must be said that he is innocent until proven otherwise,” Afro-Indigenous advocate Stephanie Ambert posted on Facebook.

Brings Plenty’s family got a court-order for the case to be sealed shortly after Oglala Sioux Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out issued a proclamation calling on federal authorities to ensure there was no foul play in the death. Native Americans have continued to advocate for Brings Plenty. Thousands of posts featuring Native Americans with their hair worn in two braids surfaced on social media with the hashtag, #BraidsforCole.

Native Americans are protective of the men in their community because of the way the media portrays them, said Mary Hammer, who is Gray’s daughter and an advocate with N.O.I.S.E, but she also said that the underlying problem of domestic abuse is not being addressed.

“We definitely do have abusive, scary men in our communities. We do have that—but that doesn’t mean every single Indigenous man is abusive or is a drunk,” she said.

“We do have to hold violent people accountable, whether they’re good most of the time or bad sometimes. We’ve never had enough time to sit and heal … We’ve had women who come out and say this person has attacked me, has abused me—and then that girl is seen as a ‘trouble maker,’ a ‘shit starter,’ a liar. Victim blaming to the max. Our people do it at an obscene level,” she said.

Native Americans have more often experienced violence as victims rather than perpetrators, according to the Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of Justice found in 2016 that 81.6 percent of Native American men have experienced violence in their lifetimes – with most of the perpetrators not being Native Americans.

That presents a challenge for those who may be advocating for people who could be both victims and perpetrators in different incidents – and people who may be high ranking members of Native communities.

Suspected case of abuse

Starr Lovett Pennington, 44, was the girlfriend of a man from a respected Osage family, Thomas Eaves, and she was found dead of blunt force trauma to the head in 2015 with broken ribs. Police said they believed it was a case of domestic abuse.

Although Eaves was arrested, he was released without trial on a technicality, after the court was unable to grant him a trial in a specified time period. The federal courts dismissed the case, with tribes currently having limited jurisdiction in handling homicide cases.

Both federal and state governments are leaving Native people unsafe and that has got to change, Gray said.

“They are already failing people that are being abused. So, literally how could the tribes do worse?” she asked.

The case of Pennington and Eaves has prompted discussion over the extent to which domestic violence in the community is rooted in historic abuses against Native Americans as generational trauma — the passing of trauma from one generation to the next — as well as trauma linked to drinking, racism, and other causes.

Mental health counselor Jon Polen said that generational trauma is not yet really being addressed in the Native American community and it’s a major factor in ongoing domestic violence.

He said that Native American men who become abusers do so, in part, because they are emotionally numb.

“They’ve had a lot of things taken away from them, so a learned helplessness goes into effect, like ‘No matter what I do, it’s all bad, so I’m still going to do what I want,'” he said.

Generational trauma

The connection between generational trauma and violence isn’t used to excuse the behavior, said Polen—but to stop it. “We discuss it as another issue that you have to address,” he said. “Your worldview is skewed because of this. You may be less sensitive, you may be less able to be empathetic, you may have a propensity to overreact.”

Researchers have also cited historical trauma as a risk factor for alcohol or drug abuse, which can then lead to domestic violence. Alcohol or drug abuse was an element in the cases of Buffalomeat, Brings Plenty and Pennington, according to those close to all cases.

Studies have shown patterns of sporadic, heavy drinking in social settings among some tribes, resulting in a greater likelihood of impairment and of involvement in violence. Native communities have been stripped of healthy models, said Aaron West Jr., program director at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Lakota Cultural Center.

“The culture center is trying to rebuild the self-esteem issue,” West said, and outlined ways they are doing so, through opportunities to engage in cultural activities such as sweats — a form of spiritual ceremony, Native American Church meetings, and other cultural learning efforts.

However, many Native American men do not take the time to regularly participate when balancing career, education and a job.

In a discussion on domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking in Native American communities in 2016, the Department of Justice reported participants as saying they experienced a shift in their youth despite involvement in ceremonies.

“We grew up with sacred ceremonies that celebrate the sacredness of life. But at the same time, we grew up seeing men mistreat women,” the DOJ reports from one Native American quoted.

Some in the community are trying to make a difference. One dance for Osage women strives to prevent anyone who has a restraining order from attending. At other dances, even traditional leaders who have been perpetrators of sexual or domestic violence are allowed to participate.

“We just need more ceremonies,” said Osage artist Sarah Elsberry, who makes art drawing attention to the MMIP crisis. “We used to have ceremonies for our youth all the time.”