Selena Not Afraid was born on June 18, 2003 in Big Horn county Montana. She was a Native American teenager living on a reservation. She had a twin sister as well as 2 brothers and 1 older sister.
On New Year’s Eve 2019, she and a few friends decided to attend a New Years Eve party about 45 minutes away in Billings, MT. Selena decided to stay at the house overnight after the party. The next day, January 1, she and 5 others (4 males and 1 female) headed back home to Hardin, MT. As they were driving down I-90, the van broke down so they decided to pull over at a rest stop near mile marker 474. Since the driver of the van couldn’t fix the van, he came up with a plan to have his mother pick them all up from the rest stop since she was already close by. This is where Selena was last seen alive, at around 2pm.
When the mother arrived at the rest stop, she couldn’t find the group. As she began looking around, she found the other female that Selena was with sitting in a ditch without Selena. This girl (who will remain unnamed) had no recollection of what had happened or how she even got there. She had scratches all over her legs and her shoes were missing.
After being notified of Selena’s disappearance, her family immediately contacted police. One witness claimed she saw Selena run off into a field near the rest stop. Police searched this field “thoroughly” by employing dogs, drones, helicopters, volunteers, family + friends of Selena, and even the FBI to scan everything within a 3-4 mile radius of the field.
Unfortunately on January 20, 2020 Selena’s body was found just 1 mile into the field. She was only 16 years old. Clearly, everyone searching missed her body. The Big Horn county police department claimed that the search wasn’t fruitful because the dogs they used were NOT cadaver dogs but rather police dogs. They also claimed the drones didn’t work because the weather was windy. Her autopsy report revealed her cause of death to be hypothermia and it was ruled accidental.
Key Takeaways:
How can a 16 year old die from hypothermia in a field that was searched ‘thoroughly’ by that many people? If you have read all of the other cases I have covered in this blog, specifically the cases where the victims were ethnic minorities, you may have noticed a pattern by now. Every time the victim’s body is found, it is found in the same area that police claimed to have searched very well. Does every search team suck? Or do the people in charge of organizing the search efforts not care when the victim isn’t white?
While watching video interviews that the Big Horn county police gave regarding Selena’s disappearance and death, I made note that they are all white. This isn’t me saying that just because they are white police officers automatically makes their intentions bad. However, I feel like if the police officers were of the same race as the victim, more initiative may have been taken and Selena could’ve potentially been found alive. It brings up the question: Why do we support police when police don’t support us?
The disappearance of Indigenous women is a huge issue in this country that doesn’t get much media coverage. In Montana, Native Americans make up less than 8% of the population yet they make up 30% of MT’s missing persons cases. Indigenous people in Montana are 4x more likely to go missing than any other race. In 2021, 80% of missing Indigenous persons cases were youth from Montana.
My roommate is Native American and when I brought this case up to her, she directed me to a movie called Wind River. The plot of the movie is very similar to the facts from Selena’s case yet the movie was made 3 years prior to Selena’s death. This just shows that cases like Selena’s are not uncommon. This is not a coincidence; this is a consequence of racism it absolutely needs to be looked into further.
Montana Missing Person’s Statistics: https://www.ktvh.com/news/missing-young-montanans
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA: https://mmiwusa.org
Donate to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center: https://www.niwrc.org/donate