Native Sun News Today Editorial: Accountability for murders of Native people

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Rapid Creek in Rapid City, South Dakota. Photo: Jeffrey Beall

The unsolved murders of Native men at Rapid City Creek

Friday, July 16, 2021

By Native Sun News Editorial Board

The murders of three Navajo men more than 30 years ago still generates strong sentiments among residents of Farmington, New Mexico.

Dodge Benally, 34, John Earl Harvey, 39, and David Ignacio, 52, were brutally beaten and left in the hills. Authorities said the men were intentionally tortured.

Three teenage white boys were charged with murdering the men. They were accused of “rolling” Indians, a reportedly common practice in the Four Corners. Some non-Indians deny the practice exists.

Throughout the ordeal, Navajos staged peaceful protests in Farmington. But when the boys were sent to a reform school instead of being treated as adults, tensions erupted when tribal members sought to hold a protest march the next day but were denied a permit.

This always reminds us that there have been more than 11 unexplained and unsolved murders right here in Rapid City since 1998. Most of the men killed were Native Americans.

There was Ben Long Wolf, age 36, George Hatton, age 56, Allen Hough, age 42, Royce Yellow Hawk, age 26, Randell Two Crow, age 48, Lauren Two Bulls, age 33, Dirk Bartling, age 44, Arthur Chamberlain, age 45, Timothy Bull Bear Sr., age 47, Lonnie Isham, age 43, and Wilbur G. Johnson, age 41 and there have been a couple of more who are not on this list.

We need to organize and find out why none of these murders have been solved. Could it be that these men were killed by white teenage boys just like the murders in New Mexico?

If so the killers have probably grown up, gone to college, and got on with their lives.