Activist fights for investigation into the murders of Dakota Indians
USA

 

Hunter Gray

 

By Hunter Gray [Hunterbear]

 

Four Native American men -- all members of the North Dakota-based Turtle
Mountain Chippewa [Ojibway] Nation  -- have been murdered in and around
Grand Forks, N.D. within the last year and a half.  There have been no
arrests. The efforts by various North Dakota law enforcement and other
officials in these tragedies  have been notably laconic, confused, and
omissive.

 

Originally from Northern Arizona, and now in Idaho, I lived and taught 
in Grand Forks and North Dakota for a generation, was head of the Grand 
Forks Mayor's Committee on Police Policy for years and, too, was chair of the
City's Community Relations Committee until we left to return to the 
Rocky Mountains in the Summer of '97. In 1989, I was honored by the State 
King Commission and then Governor George Sinner with the annual North Dakota
Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for historical and contemporary social 
justice activities.  I'm a retired full professor [and former chair] of American
Indian Studies at University of North Dakota -- where I was also on the
Graduate Faculty and served a stint as chair of Honors.

 

My wife, Eldri, and I know North Dakota extremely well, have children
in the region, and continue to be closely involved in the state.

In September, 2001, three Turtle Mountain men were murdered at 
virtually the same time in the Grand Forks setting -- a town of 50,000 on the 
Minnesota border. [It's the hometown of Leonard Peltier.]  Robert Belgarde [40] 
and Damian Belgarde [19], father and son, were killed near the town -- 
shot.

Within the Forks itself, Jerome Decoteau [50], who I knew and 
appreciated, was bludgeoned to death in his apartment.

In mid-July, 2002,  a Turtle Mountain youth, Russell Turcotte [19], was
hitch-hiking through Grand Forks at night to his home in Wolf Point,
Montana.  Last seen at a gas station on Highway 2 at the western edge
of the Forks, he was reported missing a day or two thereafter.  His
partially nude body was eventually found in early November, just
off Highway 2, near Devils Lake, N.D. -- a town about 90 miles west
of Grand Forks.

 

The response to the Belgarde murders by the Grand Forks County 
Sheriff's office was to claim at several points that they were drug-related in 
some fashion -- and hence of presumably minimal concern to the general run 
of citizenry. [These claims have now stopped, at least publicly.]  There 
have been leaked hints for months that arrests in this matter are 
forthcoming.

No action.

 

Virtually nothing has been said by the Grand Forks Police Department in 
the killing of Jerome Decoteau.  A few months ago, a leaked hint spoke of
forthcoming arrests. 

 

No action.

 

In mid-October, 2001, I wrote an angry statement about the Belgarde and
Decoteau murders, the growing deterioration and mounting lack of
sensitivity within the GF Police Department, and the general breakdown
in race relations occurring in and around the town itself.  The local
newspaper, The Grand Forks Herald, ran this as a formal editorial
 [signed by me] and asked the police chief -- who had come since we left the area -- to give his response.  He refused to do so.

 

Subsequently, in response to a series of our action memos, efforts by 
people nationally and internationally to elicit information or at least a 
response from the current mayor of Grand Forks, Michael Brown, have netted Zero.
The mayor simply doesn't answer.  For awhile the governor's office -- 
that of John Hoeven -- did at least acknowledge communications of concern.
Apparently no longer.

 

For months after Russell Turcotte's ominous disappearance at Grand 
Forks in July 2002, North Dakota lawmen in the region took the very strange 
position that it was officially a matter relating to his then residence, Wolf 
Point, in eastern Montana, and did nothing.  When, early on, a convenience
store manager told Forks police that he had a routine surveillance 
video that showed Russell Turcotte and other customers of that evening, the
police indicated they had no interest in it -- and the tape was 
eventually destroyed in the store's conventional recycling process.

 

In October, thousands of dollars and hundreds of person
hours were fruitlessly spent by a private Texas-based search 
organization which insisted on looking for Russ in the immediate Grand Forks area. 
We had strongly advised [advice obviously not taken] searching for him 
west of Grand Forks -- well along the vast Highway 2 stretch:  the road to 
Montana.

And his body was finally found much later just off Highway 2 near 
Devils Lake -- where it's been labeled a homicide and is being investigated by
Ramsey County and N.D. state lawmen.

Only a day or two after Russell Turcotte's body had been finally found 
-- and only accidentally so by a rancher -- I received a very strange
communication from Ramsey County State's Attorney Lonnie Olson -- 
trying to force me to remove all Turcotte material from our large Lair of 
Hunterbear website. [We have information there on all of the N.D. Native murders.] 
I flatly refused to do so -- and the Turcotte family vigorously backed me 
up. I then wrote a special letter to Governor John Hoeven and to the State
Attorney General, Wayne Stenehjem, about the Olson letter and demand. 

But I received no answer of any kind from those officials. We broadly 
publicized Olson's letter and  I denounced all of this  in a subsequent
article done by the Havre [Montana] newspaper.

Over many years and after many tough campaigns, we gained much ground 
in Grand Forks and North Dakota on a wide variety of social justice
endeavors -- including anti-racism.  But it's obvious that much is now 
going downhill very fast. While never any bed of roses by any means, things 
are a far cry into the negative side from where they were when I came to 
Grand Forks and the state in 1981 to teach at the University of North Dakota.

We certainly -- with all logical people everywhere -- recognize that 
all leads in these murders must be followed and that any possibly relevant
information should be reported to law enforcement officials.

I see the Belgarde murders and that of Jerome Decoteau as directly 
related in some way.  They occurred on virtually the same September 2001 date 
in the same setting.  Lawmen say there is no relationship.  But I [and others] 
do, and we strongly believe the murderers are in the basic Grand Forks 
region.

 

I do not see the Turcotte murder as related to the Belgarde and 
Decoteau killings.  Russ Turcotte was in the Forks late at night.  His mother 
had wired him train and expense money which he did not collect.  It seems
obvious that he caught a ride westward that fateful night on Highway 2 
-- the road to Montana -- and his home at Wolf Point.   An obviously sharp 
kid, who would not want to be stranded at night along a lonely highway, it's
quite unlikely that he would have gotten into a car with N.D. license
plates -- but would have checked to make certain that his ostensible 
host was obviously going all the way through.  It's highly likely that he
expected to arrive home shortly after dawn.

 

I do not see the Turcotte murder related to the racially problematic 
setting of Devil's Lake, North Dakota -- where we effectively fought many
significant Indian rights struggles in the late '80s into the '90s.  I
believe this was simply the setting in which his body was dumped.
 It's possible that he was actually killed further east -- on or just 
off Highway 2 and closer to Grand Forks.  My guess is that Russ was
murdered by a killer or killers -- passing through Grand Forks and
going far westward --  and that his murder could well have racist
connotations.

 

I'd certainly say that the Belgarde and Decoteau killings have strong
racist dimensions.  Organized hate groups -- e.g., spin-offs from the
old Posse Comitatus -- are found throughout this general region.
In addition, the setting is rife with plenty of "independent" racism.
The mounting economic vicissitudes in North Dakota and adjoining
sections -- e.g., unemployment and the collapse of many small farmers
and ranchers -- have deeply fueled these poisonous rivers.

 

We are vigorously planning appropriately creative approaches designed 
to keep the fires burning on all of these tragic issues -- and to increase 
the degree and scope of the constructive heat.

 

Your help is much needed.  We ask for e-mails. Please contact these two
State of North Dakota officials and ask them to lend every resource at 
their command to push the murder investigations of the four Turtle Mountain 
men and secure arrests.  In addition to the need for justice, there is also 
the fact that there must be no more of these murders.

 

The two officials are:

Honorable John Hoeven, Governor
governor@state.nd.us

Honorable Wayne Stenehjem,  Attorney General
ndag@state.nd.us