This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.
John Hult
South Dakota Searchlight
Allison Morrisette isn’t a detective. She’s more of a conduit.
As the state’s liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, Morrisette knows and works with prosecutors, police chiefs and sheriffs all over the state. She also knows the people who operate domestic violence shelters and other social service agencies.
For the families of Native American victims in far-flung corners of South Dakota who feel disconnected from the criminal justice system or lost somewhere within it, Morrisette’s there to make sure they’re not left out and left wondering where things stand.
It can be a heavy lift.
Most victim-witness assistants in South Dakota work in small geographic areas. Morrisette has an entire state to cover, and Native Americans represent a disparate number of those who need the kind of help she offers.
Around 60% of missing persons cases listed on the state attorney general’s website at any given time involve Native Americans. The percentages are higher for missing women and girls. About 9% of the state’s population is Native American.
When she’s not working with victims and families, Morrisette will sometimes travel throughout the state presenting statistics like those to various organizations, explaining the difficulties of finding the missing or seeking justice across state and tribal jurisdictional lines.
Morrisette is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as a youth. She’s been aware of the issue her whole life. Over the past few decades, activism and awareness campaigns have made it more visible for non-Native people.
In South Dakota, state lawmakers voted to create Morrisette’s position within the Attorney General’s Office in 2021, in part as an acknowledgment of the impact of the MMIP issue in a state that shares its lands with nine tribal nations.
The role won’t be Morrisette’s much longer. She recently decided to take a new job with the state, working with young offenders for the Unified Judicial System.
She said diversion programming for at-risk youth, which is what she did previously in Pennington County, remains a passion for her. She also called it the best decision for her family.
Morrisette called the opportunity to serve as MMIP liaison an honor, said she’s working on a transition plan for the next person, and said she looks forward to seeing that person continue building trust between families and the law enforcement agencies that aim to help them.
“I hope somebody really good applies for this position, and that it’s not just a job for them,” she said. “Because it was far more than a job for me, that’s for sure.”
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What drew you to criminal justice?
I think for me, it was being involved with the system on the other side. I wanted to be an example for the younger people on my reservation, to be able to show them that you can make systemic change from within.
I have a family that’s involved with the system. I kind of wanted to not go down that path, so I was drug- and alcohol-free all the way up until I was 19 years old. I just grew up around it, and I didn’t have any interest or desire. I saw all the bad in it, and the bad that it brought to people. I just never understood why people gravitated towards doing it when you saw the outcomes.
A lot of it too was that I joined the military at such a young age, when I was 17. My mom had to sign a waiver for me. I left the reservation as soon as I turned 18. I think getting exposed to a different culture and a bigger reality at such a young age definitely showed me that there was more out there.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you do in the day to day?
Everything changes on a daily basis, but mainly I’ll be staffing a lot of our cases, whether those be cold cases or active murder cases, partnering with domestic violence centers to get victims resources, talking to our investigators, seeing where we’re at with everything. Then also I’m partnering with grassroots organizations and supporting them through their events.
I’m there if a shelter reaches out and says, “We have an individual here who needs resources from the Oglala Sioux Tribe,” like she needs a certificate of Indian blood for her child, or she needs potential financial assistance to get from here in Rapid City back to Pine Ridge. A lot of the shelters work with each other, so sometimes someone can pick them up and take them back down, or vice versa.
It’s a lot of just collaboration, really. I’ve established these relationships all over the state with tribal entities, so sometimes it’s just being able to give them just a simple phone number — or a direct line, versus like a generic number — of somebody to reach.
Do you get involved with investigations?
People sometimes get upset because this position isn’t investigating cases, but I’m not a detective. I’m not a certified law enforcement officer.
I push people, if they know there’s a missing person, to call 911 right away. For myself and my victims’ families, if they don’t know who to contact or which investigator has their case, it’s being able to say, “OK, where did this happen?” If somebody says, “Hey, this happened up in Brookings,” well, I worked on a case with (Brookings County State’s Attorney) Dan Nelson, so I’m able to reach out to Dan and say, “Hey, so and so’s family called. Do you guys have this case? If so, who’s prosecuting it? Can you get me in contact with the victim-witness assistant from your office?”
What does the cold case workload look like? Are they separated out between active investigations and those that have stalled?
I wouldn’t say that there are really any on the back burner. When I have downtime, I’ll go through and review some of the cold cases we have with the Division of Criminal Investigation. For a lot of our cold cases, there is an investigator that’s assigned to it, and so it’s just touching base with them, and reaching out to the families and letting them know, “hey, this is where we’re at with it,” whether or not we have new information. I just want families to know that their case is not forgotten.
What is the biggest misconception you find as you go out and talk about the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People?
There are a lot of people who don’t necessarily know what it means. It’s just getting people to know that it does happen, that it is an issue, and getting them to understand the importance of it. There are so many Native Americans who do essentially go missing, but when a non-Native person goes missing, it’s so much more focused on, maybe because that’s not the norm. Maybe that’s the misconception, that it’s normal for Natives to go missing, but it shouldn’t be. It’s become normalized here. And not just here. It happens in North Dakota, as well, and Montana and Minnesota.
How do you convince families that you’re here to help?
That is a tough one to try to grasp, because coming from the state, sometimes there’s that distrust. Even being Native or being from the community, there are some families that just don’t trust this program.
It comes down to just being consistent for them when they do allow you to help, and helping wherever you can, going above and beyond for families. It’s not like they distrust the state for no reason. They usually have a reason, so it’s being respectful of their viewpoints and letting them know that, “hey, I’m here, and if you’re comfortable, I can connect you to somebody.” And then just keeping tabs from that point.
Do people call you and want to know about old cases, or cases where a death was ruled accidental and the family suspects foul play?
They do call and ask for an understanding of their case and if we can get it reopened, so we do review those. It is kind of difficult, because we want to be respectful, too, of the law enforcement agency that investigated it. So it’s kind of just balancing boundaries.
And then we do have a few of our cold cases where the primary agent, or two primary agents, are deceased. So that does make it difficult when you have questions about some of the narrative things.
What do you think the improvements have been recently in this area? And where are the places where there are gaps to be filled? Do we need a few more of you, for example?
It would be nice to have a couple more of me. I feel like even one more, to have someone on the eastern side of the state, would be really beneficial, because there are some events over there that I’m just not able to make it to.
I also want to acknowledge the collaboration that law enforcement has. Just because there is a primary agency that’s the lead agency on the case doesn’t mean there weren’t multiple agencies involved. I think that’s what’s evolving currently is the collaboration across multiple jurisdictions, and realizing that it takes everybody to get justice for families.
