On the rugged plains of North Dakota lives an extraordinary individual who, for the past 15 years or so, has taken it upon herself to investigate, search for and attempt to recover people who have disappeared. Native American communities have experienced high rates of assault, abduction and murder of tribal members for decades, and data shows that indigenous women make up a significant portion of missing and murdered individuals, with many cases remaining unsolved. Lissa Yellow Bird, a member of the Arikara tribe, heads up an operation called the Sahnish Scouts, an informal collection of family, friends and acquaintances who respond when the remarkable Yellow Bird puts out the call.

Since the Sahnish Scouts were formed, more than a hundred families have sought their support in cases where loved ones are unaccounted for. “We offer a safe space, free of shame and blame, for relatives of the missing to share information,” Yellow Bird explains. “I try to identify and rectify the reasons why our people are going missing, murdered or are being exploited, and then on top of that, I search for the remains of those who have been left out on the land somewhere.” Toward that end, she adopted two human remains detection dogs, Gah Dah and Bah Doh (their names mean “yellow” and “red”). “They speak Arikara,” she explains. Two retired officers trained the dogs beginning at 8 weeks old, and then Yellow Bird had to be trained. “I had only intended on getting one but I had a spiritual epiphany when I got there and these two brothers chose me.”

The subject of a New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–nominated book by Sierra Crane Murdoch, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and A Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, she acknowledges an appreciation for the growing national awareness about missing and murdered indigenous people. However, Yellow Bird emphasizes a somewhat different take on this issue: “I say ‘missing and murdered relatives’ — I don’t say women, or men, or children, because when we say relatives it has a broader definition, it means the men, it means the women, it means our Black indigenous, it means our two-spirit, or our LGBTQ community. It also means our indigenous allies, or people who we adopted through spiritual practices — so if you, Dr. Gene, were my adopted brother, and you went missing, when I say relatives, you would be my adopted relative, so I would come. So, not to be exclusive, we want to be inclusive to our non-indigenous allies as well.”

The genesis of Yellow Bird’s journey toward creating the Sahnish Scouts began in 2006. “My two boys were 4 and 5 and they had a friend in our neighborhood, in Minot, North Dakota, a little 3-year-old girl named Reachelle Smith, and she went missing. To this day, she’s never been recovered and is considered deceased. And that really hit home for me. When she went missing, that kind of stuck with me.” A few years later, around 2010, another child disappeared at 5 or 6 years old. “Because of what happened with Reachelle, that always kind of haunted me, so I figured, if you see something, then say something.” This time Yellow Bird sprang into action, especially as a blizzard with wind chills of 40 below zero had hit the region. “I calculated in my head what to do. I knew there were a bunch of teenagers who were always playing with the Xbox in the back room and I put them to work. I had them go through a large apartment community from one building to another, running through the halls screaming this kid’s name. Then me and one of my sons jumped in a van and we went looking through the neighborhood, and my son spotted her, and she was rescued.” She adds, “That girl is now 19 or 20 years old and has her own baby.”

Yellow Bird explains that the case that eventually led to a lifestyle centered around searching for missing people was the disappearance of (Kristopher) KC Clarke, which became a well-publicized case and is at the center of the aforementioned best-selling book. “There was a tribal official peripherally mentioned in connection with that one, and it got a lot of attention — so that’s how I got into it. Having the care and consideration that any mother would have for your missing child, and then seeing some of the shortcomings and the lack of knowledge of what they could do from different law enforcement agencies — I realized they were very overworked and underfunded.”

Over the years, Yellow Bird has worked with a number of different law enforcement agencies.  “I want to tell you that there’s been a lot of officers that have helped me along the way. I’ve had a few of them say, ‘I’ve got to be loyal to my badge but we appreciate what you’re doing.’ Some of them have let me in and have given me some insight so I can see what they’re working with, and [I’ve seen that often] there are so many boundaries and protocols and procedures that prevent them doing what they need to do. That tells me that systemically we have a lot of changes to make, like funding is an issue.”

Continuing in this track, she explains, “I have found over the course of my involvement in this realm that there are caring and considerate people out there that want to be a part of the solution. So … can we get some funding for each state so people can start their own groups, and people could get the training, so if they find a crime scene they know, ‘OK, this is what we have to do’? They could persevere and keep going on with that case and then call the police when needed. Make some kind of mutual agreements, and give training to those people and help relieve some of the police’s responsibilities. We could be more of a resource and asset to them rather than some kind of factor of intimidation. We’re not a threat, so let’s try to find some way that we can all work together.”

Yellow Bird acknowledges some of the gains that have been made in public awareness in this area, such as in Beltrami County, Minnesota, where the sheriff’s department has placed stickers on the back windows of its patrol cars to highlight the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW). “They’re acknowledging there’s a problem, and they don’t want to be a part of that problem anymore, they want to be part of the solution. I’ve done a lot of searches in Beltrami County — so to see that detail in the sheriff’s unit was like hitting a milestone, and they’re acknowledging that yes, there’s a problem, and like they say, the first part of recovery is admitting that there’s a problem.”

Near the conclusion of our interview, I asked how many searches Yellow Bird has undertaken, and how many have been successful. “What a lot of people don’t understand is that this is a spiritual movement, this is a spiritual journey that I’m on — so I don’t keep names and I don’t keep a head count, because I don’t need to keep score,” she responds. “I hate to sound like John Belushi, but I’m on a mission from God.”