The first call that John Grinsell received as the sole agent for Northern Cheyenne Investigative Services in February 2022 was for an assault. He arrived at the scene with no radio, no gun and no backup.
A Northern Cheyenne man who grew up in Busby, just within the boundary of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Grinsell was just a few hours into a job created after a contentious back-and-forth between the Eastern Montanan tribe and federal authorities. The role came out of a nearly universal demand from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe for adequate public safety.
The tribe sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs, tasked with enforcing the law on Indian reservations nationwide, to wrest control over criminal investigations. Taking a proactive approach to investigating major crimes within the Northern Cheyenne Nation was just one of several grievances the tribe has leveled at the federal government over persistent failures to create a reliable, consistent police force and criminal justice system.
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A Northern Cheyenne tribal flag billows in Lame Deer on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
The unanimous demand for better law enforcement has spurred the tribe to take the reigns as the rest of the country grapples with the role of police in public safety.
Since that evening in February 2022, Grinsell has filed dozens of reports, all of them violent and major crimes on the reservation. Cases investigated by Grinsell have resulted in several convictions in U.S. District Court. Going into NCIS’s second year, Grinsell, who retired from the BIA, has welcomed a second investigator with the aim of passing on the agency he helped create to a new generation.
“I can’t do this forever,” said Grinsell, who as of the spring of 2023 was operating out of an office space in Lame Deer, the tribal headquarters for the Northern Cheyenne.
The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, spanning around 444,000 acres, is home to around 5,000 people. U.S. Highway 212 stretches from its western to eastern borders, and has a steady flow of local and national traffic. With 99% of the land tribally owned, many tribal members support themselves through farming and ranching. The federal and tribal governments, however, are the reservation’s largest employers.
In the summer of 2020, while tribal members were bracing against the COVID-19 outbreak, others were burying their sons and daughters who died violently. Throughout that year, the deaths of Kymani Littlebird, Christy Woodenthigh and Cory Blackwolf, spurred a demand from their families and friends for more transparency and resources from the federal government.
Homicide remains a leading cause of death for Indigenous people in the United States for years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC published a report documenting American Indian and Alaska Natives homicides from 2003 to 2018. Of the 2,226 homicides included in the report, about half were killed in metropolitan areas.
This uptick in violence coincided with a dwindling number of BIA officers assigned to patrol the reservation. Only a fraction of the 18 positions allotted by Congress have been filled over the past several years, the Gazette previously reported. In recent years, Grinsell said, there has been a high turnover rate among patrol officers and commanders assigned to the reservation, coupled with low recruitment numbers, keeping those positions unfilled.
Along with the number of officers dipping to as low as four during that time, the closure of the dilapidated jail in Lame Deer has forced officers to ferry anyone arrested either to a facility in Hardin, about an hour’s drive west of Lame Deer, or arrange for them to be taken as far away as Wyoming or Oklahoma. Response times, according to Grinsell and statements made from Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council members during their sessions, have ranged from five minutes to five hours.
Prior to 2020, deaths on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation were making headlines and prompting legislative changes. In 2013, the body of 21-year-old Hanna Harris was found near the Lame Deer rodeo grounds. While an official cause of death could not be determined, a couple from off the reservation, Eugenia Ann Rowland and Garrett Sidney Henderson Wadda, were sentenced for Harris’s murder.
In 2019, then Gov. Steve Bullock signed Hanna’s Act into law, which allowed the state Department of Justice to assist in missing persons cases on Indian reservations. Harris’ birthday remains a statewide day of mourning and protest for the friends and families of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Montana. On May 5 of this year, Harris would have been 21.
Among the agents assigned to investigate Harris’ murder in 2013 was a criminal investigator for the BIA Office of Justice Services on the Crow Indian Reservation, John Grinsell.
After serving in the U.S. Army for three years, Grinsell joined the BIA in the early 1990s and remained with the bureau for around 25 years. During that time, he worked on patrol as an investigator specializing in drug trafficking. He was also the chief of police for several years on the Northern Cheyenne and Blackfeet Indian reservations.
Head of Northern Cheyenne Investigation Services John Grinsell is photographed in his office in Lame Deer on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
“As a (BIA) patrolman, what’s unique is that you have both tribal jurisdiction and federal jurisdiction, you respond to a variety of calls,” Grinsell said. “On the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, alcohol is illegal, and so a lot of them come from that…from the public intoxication to homicide.”
On the reservation, Grinsell said, an entire shift can pass without a call. What exacerbates the problem with a lack of patrol officers is the distance any one officer might have to cover in a jurisdiction spanning 444,000 acres.
“We have five outlying districts, the furthest one being 22 miles out,” Grinsell said. “So you get a call out there, and if you’re the only one, that means your backup could also be as far as 22 miles away.”
Grinsell returned home to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a year of violence. It wasn’t long after his return that he started lobbying for a role in law enforcement on the reservation. He joined other members of the Tribal Council in reaching out to the BIA, along with Montana’s Congressional delegates for more people and more funding.
Tensions between the tribe and the BIA metastasized into two lawsuits, one of which is still ongoing. One lawsuit has the Northern Cheyenne Tribe demanding the BIA address their mounting public safety concerns. As recently as March 2022, according to reports included with the lawsuit, the BIA had only two patrol officers on duty during most shifts. In June of this year, a man was shot dead in Lame Deer. The Northern Cheyenne capital was placed on lockdown during the ensuing manhunt.
“A lot of these issues are due to a lack of training,” Grinsell said. “To be an officer here is a nightmare because there’s hardly any training, and you can’t make any arrests because there’s no arrest space.”
The lawsuit alleged those officers who are on duty consistently show a lack of understanding of both tribal and federal law. Officers have also allegedly failed to properly investigate crimes, gather and store evidence, file police reports and some have even failed to appear for Tribal Court hearings. Cases that could have been charged and prosecuted as federal crimes, according to the lawsuit, have been squandered because of the BIA officers’ failure to investigate crimes or complete adequate police reports.
“The (NCIS) formed because of a lack of investigations on the part of the BIA and the way the BIA was treating the tribe,” Grinsell said. “The Christy Woodenthigh case played a big part in that criticism.”
Christy Rose Woodenthigh, a mother of three from Lame Deer, died of blunt force trauma after being struck by a vehicle in March 2020 on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. The man accused of hitting her was acquitted of an involuntary manslaughter charge when BIA agents testified at a trial in federal court that they did not follow protocols when investigating the case.
“That’s why people here get frustrated,” Grinsell said. “Imagine if you were a victim, or the family or friend of a victim.”
While tribal leadership has ambitions to assume total control of police work on the reservation, Grinsell said their first step was launching its own investigations service. Negotiations with the BIA to enter into a “638 contract,” he said, were contentious. The “638 contract” refers to the Indian Self-Determination Act of the 1970s, also known as Public Law 93-638. By utilizing the authority of the act, Indigenous tribes and nations can assume the funding and control of any program or service given to them by the federal government.
When the tribe submitted their funding request to the BIA for $1.2 million to establish NCIS, the BIA countered with $200,000. Grinsell and other tribal members had to take the bureau to federal court in a second lawsuit to squeeze out as much money as they could. The result was $500,000 to cover the salaries of two criminal investigators, an administrative assistant and equipment.
“The tribe really is not asking for cash,” he said. “The tribe is asking for some basic law enforcement.”
NCIS has settled into its role on the reservation and assisted in investigating several federal cases that ended with prison sentences. Grinsell said at any time he might have as many as 30 or more ongoing cases, which include child abuse to assault to domestic violence. In working with BIA patrol officers, Grinsell said those on shift have been a great help to him in his investigations, and he’s been happy to help patrol officers on the reservation whenever they call him. Beyond his responsibilities as head of the NCIS, Grinsell said he wants to see the agency expand its partnerships, particularly in investigating cases of missing persons.
“A lot of our people end up going missing in Billings, and I want to curb that. No offense to the Billings Police Department, but they’re strapped. I think we could absolutely lend them a hand in missing persons cases eventually,” he said.
Over the past several months, and another round of negotiations with the BIA, the tribe is preparing to take another step toward managing its own law enforcement. Grinsell said seven local tribal members will take over dispatching services on the reservation. Once those positions are confirmed by a funding agreement, he said, the next step will be bringing on more NCIS criminal investigators.
“We go forward, because this is our home,” Grinsell said.
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